Cloudinary makes Direct Upload easy from Browser or Mobile App to the Cloud

Cloudinary is a cloud-based end to end solution for image management which includes uploads, storage, manipulations, optimizations and delivery. Handling user-uploaded images on the websites are a time-consuming task. Cloudinary’s cloud-based image management service can help user uploading into a lightweight operation that bypasses server altogether.

Images that are uploaded directly to servers require heavy server-side processing, bandwidth and storage space. One way to offload images is to transfer them to cloud storage. Handling upload operation self-owned servers and then transferring to the cloud is a waste of server resources.

A smarter option is to enable uploading of images directly from users’ browsers to the cloud. Cloudinary image management solution uses jQuery plugin to upload images however, it lacked a small server-side component to handle authentication.

Cloudinary has introduced a new option that simplifies the upload process and completely bypasses the server- Direct unsigned upload. Uploads can be done directly from the browser of the app to Cloudinary with no predefined authentication. Instead, upload options are controlled by centralized configuration. This is easier to implement and is more suitable for modern client-side and mobile apps with a fast, dynamic UI.

Direct uploading to the cloud from a browser or mobile app is very powerful. Unsigned uploading makes this much simpler to use in modern apps, while security measures are taken to detect and prevent abuse attempts.

This means that Cloudinary takes care of the entire image management flow – simply call the upload API from your mobile app, or include a single jQuery line in your web app, and images are uploaded directly to Cloudinary. No need for a server-side component at all, you can control upload options using presets from a centralized location, and then dynamically manipulate your images and deliver them from a fast CDN, using nothing but client-side code.