How can I draw an image from the HTML5 File API on Canvas?

Jonas picture Jonas · Jul 21, 2011 · Viewed 79.3k times · Source

I would like to draw an image opened with the HTML5 File API on a canvas.

In the handleFiles(e) method, I can access the File with e.target.files[0] but I can't draw that image directly using drawImage. How do I draw an image from the File API on HTML5 canvas?

Here is the code I have used:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8"/>
<script>
window.onload = function() {
    var input = document.getElementById('input');
    input.addEventListener('change', handleFiles);
}

function handleFiles(e) {
    var ctx = document.getElementById('canvas').getContext('2d');
    ctx.drawImage(e.target.files[0], 20,20);
    alert('the image is drawn');
}
</script>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Test</h1>
<input type="file" id="input"/>
<canvas width="400" height="300" id="canvas"/>
</body>
</html>

Answer

pimvdb picture pimvdb · Jul 21, 2011

You have a File instance which is not an image.

To get an image, use new Image(). The src needs to be an URL referencing to the selected File. You can use URL.createObjectURL to get an URL referencing to a Blob (a File is also a Blob): http://jsfiddle.net/t7mv6/86/.

var ctx = document.getElementById('canvas').getContext('2d');
var img = new Image;
img.onload = function() {
    ctx.drawImage(img, 20,20);
    alert('the image is drawn');
}
img.src = URL.createObjectURL(e.target.files[0]);

Note: be sure to revoke the object url when you are done with it otherwise you'll leak memory. If you're not doing anything too crazy, you can just stick a URL.revokeObjectURL(img.src) in the img.onload function.

References: