Angular migration guide

Introduction

Cloudinary's Angular SDK is designed to provide a simpler and more enhanced developer experience. This guide explains how to migrate your Angular code from the legacy cloudinary_angular (legacy Angular library) to the latest Angular SDK, which includes @cloudinary/ng from the frontend-frameworks library together with @cloudinary/url-gen from the js-url-gen library.

Key improvements in the Angular SDK:

• A new action-based syntax, designed to make building delivery URLs and transformations more logical and discoverable.
  • When compiled to the final delivery URL, each action (including any action qualifiers) represents a different component (separated by a '/'), for example: /c_scale,w_400/f_auto/q_auto/, rather than /c_scale,f_auto,q_auto,w_400/.
• Newly added autocomplete to list options and parameters and ensure only those that are supported can be used together.
• A smaller bundle size - you only need to import what you want to use.

For full documentation on using the @cloudinary/ng + @cloudinary/url-gen packages in your Angular app, see the Angular SDK guide.

Key considerations

Cloudinary's Angular package (@cloudinary/ng from the frontend-frameworks library) must be used in conjunction with the Cloudinary JavaScript SDK (@cloudinary/url-gen) to provide all of Cloudinary's transformation and optimization functionality. As such, the latest Angular SDK is very different from the cloudinary_angular library in its architecture and usage, so migration paths depend on your current usage of the Angular library.

You can use the cloudinary-core, cloudinary/angular-5.x (or other version), @cloudinary/ng and @cloudinary/url-gen packages in your application concurrently, so although not recommended for the long term due to the increased bundle size, you could start by integrating @cloudinary/ng and @cloudinary/url-gen into your application and slowly migrate your functionality piece by piece, until you are able to remove all cloudinary_angular functionality.

Installation

Install the required packages using the NPM package manager:

Migrating Cloudinary instance configuration

Using the legacy Angular SDK, you configure your cloud name and other configuration parameters in a CloudinaryModule. This is similar to configuring these parameters in a Cloudinary instance, provided by the @cloudinary/url-gen library, in that the configuration is set once, rather than for each image or video.

For example, setting cloudName and secure in a CloudinaryModule element:

is similar to setting cloudName and secure in a Cloudinary instance:

Migrating delivery URLs

The cl-image component in the legacy Angular SDK has been replaced by the advanced-image component in @cloudinary/ng.

Whereas in the legacy Angular SDK you specify transformation parameters in the cl-image component, in the latest SDK they are specified in @cloudinary/url-gen in a CloudinaryImage object that you then pass to the advanced-image component.

Here is an example of a cl-image component with transformation parameters included:

There is no easy migration path from a cl-image component to an advanced-image component, but you can use the following process as an intermediate step, to create a URL that you can use as the source for a regular image tag:

1. Convert the cl-image component to JSON. An XML to JSON converter can help with this transition, or you may want to use a script if you have a large number of URLs to convert. The previous example would become:

2. Pass this JSON to the createCloudinaryLegacyURL function, included in the @cloudinary/url-gen library, to return a delivery URL that includes the transformations. Configuration parameters, such as cloud_name, should be included in the function call as this is simply a helper function to build the delivery URL:

3. Use this URL as the source for a regular image tag.

For all new Cloudinary delivery URLs, you should start to use @cloudinary/url-gen to create a CloudinaryImage that you can use in the advanced-image Angular component:

The resulting URL is:

Migrating advanced image components and responsive functionality

The advanced image components (lazy loading, image placeholders and image accessibility) and responsive image settings offered by the legacy Angular SDK, are offered as plugins in the latest Angular SDK.

When you have migrated your delivery URLs to use the advanced-image component, you can use any of the plugins as follows:

// In your app.component.ts use @cloudinary/url-gen to generate your transformations. import {CloudinaryModule} from '@cloudinary/ng'; import {Component, OnInit} from '@angular/core'; import {CloudinaryImage} from '@cloudinary/url-gen';

// Import the plugins. import {accessibility, responsive, lazyload, placeholder} from '@cloudinary/ng';

@Component({ selector: 'app-root', standalone: true, imports: [CommonModule, RouterOutlet, CloudinaryModule], templateUrl: './app.component.html', styleUrl: './app.component.css' })

export class AppComponent implements OnInit{ myImage: CloudinaryImage;

// Use all the plugins. plugins = [lazyload(), responsive(), accessibility(), placeholder()]

ngOnInit() {

} }

// In your view add the advanced-image component and pass your Cloudinary image and plugins. ```