Add An Advanced File Uploader To Your React.js App

Overview

In this article, we are going to integrate Uploadcare ( An Advanced File Uploader ) which includes drag-and-drop image uploader, direct link image uploader and etc.. in our react.js app.

Creating a react app

The first step is to create a simple react app which you can do just by running the command below in your terminal.

npx create-react-app upload-care

This might take a while and it depends on your computer specs but once it is done go to the new directory which is created ( In our case upload-care ) and run npm start or yarn start. This command will start the development server for your react app. Now open this directory (In our case upload-care) in any code editor

Cleaning up the project

Once you opened the directory in your code editor, You can see that there are many files and folders, but for this project, we don't need most of them. Let's go ahead and delete the files which we don't need. In the src folder delete all files except App.js, Index.js, and App.css.

Once you removed them, delete everything which is inside of App.js and paste the below code instead.

import React from 'react'

export default function App() {
  return (
    <div>
      <h1>React x UploadCare</h1>
    </div>
  )
}

also delete everything which is inside of Index.js and paste the below code instead.

import React from 'react';
import ReactDOM from 'react-dom';
import App from './App';

ReactDOM.render(
  <React.StrictMode>
    <App />
  </React.StrictMode>,
  document.getElementById('root')
);

and also delete everything inside of App.css. Now in the public folder delete everything except index.html. Delete everything which is inside of the index.html and instead paste the below code

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8" />
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1" />
    <title>React x UploadCare</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <noscript>You need to enable JavaScript to run this app.</noscript>
    <div id="root"></div>
  </body>
</html>

Finally, this is how your folder structure should look like 👇

📦
├── package.json
├── public
│   └── index.html
├── README.md
├── src
│   ├── App.css
│   ├── App.js
│   └── index.js
└── yarn.lock

Getting an API key

Signup for an account in Uploadcare's website and click on API Keys from the sidebar

Copy your public key as we need it in further steps.

Installing and Adding Uploadcare

Now It is time to install Uploadcare in the react application, to do that simply run

npm install @uploadcare/react-widget

Once it is installed, you need to import the package into your app.js, to do that simply add this code to the top of your app.js code

import { Widget } from "@uploadcare/react-widget";

To use the File Uploader component, you can add the below code to your app.js or another template of your choice:

<p>
  <label htmlFor='file'>Your file:</label>{' '}
  <Widget publicKey='YOUR_PUBLIC_KEY' id='file' />
</p>

finally, this is how your app.js should look like.

import React from "react";
import { Widget } from "@uploadcare/react-widget";

export default function App() {
  return (
    <div>
      <p>
        <label htmlFor="file">Your file:</label>{" "}
        <Widget publicKey="YOUR_PUBLIC_KEY" id="file" />
      </p>
    </div>
  );
}

Now, paste your public key in place of YOUR_PUBILC_KEY in the above code. Open your browser and go to localhost:300. and 💥 now you have Uploadcare integrated into your app. If anyone uploads a file using the Uploadcare widget, You can view those files in your dashboard.

Conclusion

I hope you found this article useful, if you need any help please let me know in the comment section.

You can find the complete source code here

Would you like to buy me a coffee, You can do it here.

Let's connect on Twitter and LinkedIn.

👋 Thanks for reading, See you next time

Add An Advanced File Uploader To Your React.js App - Uploadcare

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