PHP SDK (Legacy)

Overview

Cloudinary's PHP SDK provides simple, yet comprehensive image and video upload, transformation, optimization, and delivery capabilities that you can implement using code that integrates seamlessly with your existing PHP application.

The library is based on generic code that can be used with PHP frameworks such as Yii, CodeIgniter, CakePHP, Zend, Symfony and others.

Quick example: Transformations

Take a look at the following transformation code and the image it delivers:

This relatively simple code performs all of the following on the original front_face.jpg image before delivering it:

• Crop to a 150x150 thumbnail using face-detection gravity to automatically determine the location for the crop
• Round the corners with a 20 pixel radius
• Apply a sepia effect
• Overlay the Cloudinary logo on the southeast corner of the image (with a slight offset). The logo is scaled down to a 50 pixel width, with increased brightness and partial transparency (opacity = 60%)
• Rotate the resulting image (including the overlay) by 10 degrees
• Convert and deliver the image in PNG format (the originally uploaded image was a JPG)

And here's the URL that would be included in the image tag that's automatically generated from the above code:

In a similar way, you can transform a video.

Quick example: File upload

The following PHP code uploads the dog.mp4 video to the specified sub-folder using the public_id, my_dog. The video will overwrite the existing my_dog video if it exists. When the video upload is complete, the specified notification URL will receive details about the uploaded media asset.

PHP library features

• Build URLs for image and video transformations
• PHP view helper tags for embedding and transforming images
• API wrappers: file upload, administration, sprite generation and more
• Server-side file upload + direct unsigned file upload from the browser using the jQuery plugin

Installation

Composer installation

Use Composer to manage your PHP library dependency, and install Cloudinary's PHP library directly from the Packagist repository.

1. Update your composer.json file as follows:

2. Automatically install dependencies including Cloudinary's PHP package:

Manual installation

Although Composer is the recommended method for installing the PHP library, if necessary you can also manually install the library as follows:

1. Download the latest sources from:
   https://github.com/cloudinary/cloudinary_php/archive/support/1.x.zip.

2. Copy the src folder and the autoload.php file into your PHP project and then include Cloudinary's PHP classes in your code:

Configuration

To use the Cloudinary PHP library, you have to configure at least your cloud_name. An api_key and api_secret are also needed for secure API calls to Cloudinary (e.g., image and video uploads). You can find your product environment configuration credentials in the API Keys page of the Cloudinary Console.

In addition to the required configuration parameters, you can define a number of optional configuration parameters if relevant.

Setting the configuration parameters can be done globally, using either an environment variable or the config method, or programmatically in each call to a Cloudinary method. Parameters set in a call to a Cloudinary method override globally set parameters.

Setting the CLOUDINARY_URL environment variable

You can configure the required cloud_name, api_key, and api_secret by defining the CLOUDINARY_URL environment variable. Copy the API environment variable format from the API Keys page of the Cloudinary Console Settings. Replace <your_api_key> and <your_api_secret> with your actual values, while your cloud name is already correctly included in the format. When using Cloudinary through a PaaS add-on (e.g., Heroku or AppFog), this environment variable is automatically defined in your deployment environment. For example:

Append additional configuration parameters, for example upload_prefix and secure_distribution, to the environment variable:

Setting parameters globally

Here's an example of setting configuration parameters globally in your PHP application:

PHP capitalization and data type guidelines

When using the PHP SDK, keep these guidelines in mind:

• Parameter names: snake_case. For example: public_id
• Classes: PascalCase. For example: CloudinaryField
• Methods: snake_case. For example: cl_image_upload_tag
• Pass parameter data as: array

Sample projects

For additional useful code samples and to learn how to integrate Cloudinary with your PHP applications, take a look at our Sample Projects.

• Basic PHP sample: Uploading local and remote images to Cloudinary and generating various transformation URLs.
• PHP Photo Album: A fully working web application that allows you to upload photos, maintain a database with references, list images with their metadata, and display them using various cloud-based transformations. Image uploading is performed both from the server side and directly from the browser using a jQuery plugin.