Uppy

Uppy is a sleek, modular JavaScript file uploader that integrates seamlessly with any application. It’s fast, easy to use and lets you worry about more important problems than building a file uploader.

Fetch files from local disk, remote URLs, Google Drive, Dropbox, Instagram or snap and record selfies with a camera
Preview and edit metadata with a nice interface
Upload to the final destination, optionally process/encode

Read the docs | Try Uppy

Uppy is being developed by the folks at Transloadit, a versatile file encoding service.

Example

Code used in the above example:

const Uppy = require('@uppy/core')
const Dashboard = require('@uppy/dashboard')
const GoogleDrive = require('@uppy/google-drive')
const Instagram = require('@uppy/instagram')
const Webcam = require('@uppy/webcam')
const Tus = require('@uppy/tus')

const uppy = Uppy({ autoProceed: false })
  .use(Dashboard, { trigger: '#select-files' })
  .use(GoogleDrive, { target: Dashboard, companionUrl: 'https://companion.uppy.io' })
  .use(Instagram, { target: Dashboard, companionUrl: 'https://companion.uppy.io' })
  .use(Webcam, { target: Dashboard })
  .use(Tus, { endpoint: 'https://master.tus.io/files/' })
  .on('complete', (result) => {
    console.log('Upload result:', result)
  })

Try it online or read the docs for more details on how to use Uppy and its plugins.

Features

Lightweight, modular plugin-based architecture, easy on dependencies
Resumable file uploads via the open tus standard, so large uploads survive network hiccups
Supports picking files from: Webcam, Dropbox, Google Drive, Instagram, bypassing the user’s device where possible, syncing between servers directly via @uppy/companion
Works great with file encoding and processing backends, such as Transloadit, works great without (just roll your own Apache/Nginx/Node/FFmpeg/etc backend)
Sleek user interface
Optional file recovery (after a browser crash) with Golden Retriever
Speaks multiple languages (i18n)
Built with accessibility in mind
Free for the world, forever (as in beer 🍺, pizza 🍕, and liberty 🗽)
Cute as a puppy, also accepts cat pictures

Installation

$ npm install @uppy/core @uppy/dashboard @uppy/tus

We recommend installing from npm and then using a module bundler such as Webpack, Browserify or Rollup.js.

Add CSS uppy.min.css, either to your HTML page's <head> or include in JS, if your bundler of choice supports it — transforms and plugins are available for Browserify and Webpack.

Alternatively, you can also use a pre-built bundle from Transloadit's CDN: Edgly. In that case Uppy will attach itself to the global window.Uppy object.

⚠️ The bundle currently consists of most Uppy plugins, so this method is not recommended for production, as your users will have to download all plugins when you are likely using just a few.

<!-- 1. Add CSS to `<head>` -->
<link href="https://transloadit.edgly.net/releases/uppy/v1.14.1/uppy.min.css" rel="stylesheet">

<!-- 2. Add JS before the closing `</body>` -->
<script src="https://transloadit.edgly.net/releases/uppy/v1.14.1/uppy.min.js"></script>

<!-- 3. Initialize -->
<div class="UppyDragDrop"></div>
<script>
  var uppy = Uppy.Core()
  uppy.use(Uppy.DragDrop, { target: '.UppyDragDrop' })
  uppy.use(Uppy.Tus, { endpoint: '//master.tus.io/files/' })
</script>

Documentation

Uppy — full list of options, methods and events
Plugins — list of Uppy plugins and their options
Companion — setting up and running a Companion instance, which adds support for Instagram, Dropbox, Google Drive and remote URLs
React — components to integrate Uppy UI plugins with React apps
Architecture & Writing a Plugin — how to write a plugin for Uppy

Plugins

List of plugins and their common options

UI Elements

Dashboard — universal UI with previews, progress bars, metadata editor and all the cool stuff. Required for most UI plugins like Webcam and Instagram
Progress Bar — minimal progress bar that fills itself when upload progresses
Status Bar — more detailed progress, pause/resume/cancel buttons, percentage, speed, uploaded/total sizes (included by default with Dashboard)
Informer — send notifications like “smile” before taking a selfie or “upload failed” when all is lost (also included by default with Dashboard)

Sources

Drag & Drop — plain and simple drag and drop area
File Input — even plainer “select files” button
Webcam — snap and record those selfies 📷
ⓒ Google Drive
ⓒ Dropbox
ⓒ Instagram
ⓒ Facebook
ⓒ OneDrive
ⓒ Import From URL — support picking files from remote providers or direct URLs from anywhere on the web

The ⓒ mark means that @uppy/companion, a server-side component, is needed for a plugin to work.

Destinations

Tus — resumable uploads via the open tus standard
XHR Upload — regular uploads for any backend out there (like Apache, Nginx)
AWS S3 — uploader for AWS S3
AWS S3 Multipart — upload to AWS S3

File Processing

Robodog — user friendly abstraction to do file processing with Transloadit
Transloadit — support for Transloadit’s robust file uploading and encoding backend

Miscellaneous

Golden Retriever — restores files after a browser crash, like it’s nothing
Thumbnail Generator — generates image previews (included by default with Dashboard)
Form — collects metadata from <form> right before an Uppy upload, then optionally appends results back to the form
Redux — for your emerging time traveling needs

React

React — components to integrate Uppy UI plugins with React apps
React Native — basic Uppy component for React Native with Expo

Browser Support

We aim to support IE11 and recent versions of Safari, Edge, Chrome, Firefox and Opera.

We still run end-to-end tests with IE10, but we are not actively supporting it or fixing visual / minor issues.

Polyfills

Uppy heavily uses Promises. If your target environment does not support Promises, use a polyfill like es6-promise before initializing Uppy.

When using remote providers like Google Drive or Dropbox, the Fetch API is used. If your target environment does not support the Fetch API, use a polyfill like whatwg-fetch before initializing Uppy. The Fetch API polyfill must be loaded after the Promises polyfill, because Fetch uses Promises.

With a module bundler, you can use the required polyfills like so:

npm install es6-promise whatwg-fetch

require('es6-promise/auto')
require('whatwg-fetch')
const Uppy = require('@uppy/core')

If you're using Uppy from CDN, es6-promise and whatwg-fetch are already included in the bundle, so no need to include anything additionally:

<script src="https://transloadit.edgly.net/releases/uppy/v1.14.1/uppy.min.js"></script>

FAQ

Why not just use `<input type="file">`?

Having no JavaScript beats having a lot of it, so that’s a fair question! Running an uploading & encoding business for ten years though we found that in cases, the file input leaves some to be desired:

We received complaints about broken uploads and found that resumable uploads are important, especially for big files and to be inclusive towards people on poorer connections (we also launched tus.io to attack that problem). Uppy uploads can survive network outages and browser crashes or accidental navigate-aways.
Uppy supports editing meta information before uploading (and e.g. cropping is planned).
There’s the situation where people are using their mobile devices and want to upload on the go, but they have their picture on Instagram, files in Dropbox or just a plain file URL from anywhere on the open web. Uppy allows to pick files from those and push it to the destination without downloading it to your mobile device first.
Accurate upload progress reporting is an issue on many platforms.
Some file validation — size, type, number of files — can be done on the client with Uppy.
Uppy integrates webcam support, in case your users want to upload a picture/video/audio that does not exist yet :)
A larger drag and drop surface can be pleasant to work with. Some people also like that you can control the styling, language, etc.
Uppy is aware of encoding backends. Often after an upload, the server needs to rotate, detect faces, optimize for iPad, or what have you. Uppy can track progress of this and report back to the user in different ways.
Sometimes you might want your uploads to happen while you continue to interact on the same single page.

Not all apps need all of these features. An <input type="file"> is fine in many situations. But these were a few things that our customers hit / asked about enough to spark us to develop Uppy.

Why is all this goodness free?

Transloadit’s team is small and we have a shared ambition to make a living from open source. By giving away projects like tus.io and Uppy, we’re hoping to advance the state of the art, make life a tiny little bit better for everyone and in doing so have rewarding jobs and get some eyes on our commercial service: a content ingestion & processing platform.

Our thinking is that if just a fraction of our open source userbase can see the appeal of hosted versions straight from the source, that could already be enough to sustain our work. So far this is working out! We’re able to dedicate 80% of our time to open source and haven’t gone bankrupt yet. :D

Does Uppy support React?

Yep, we have Uppy React components, please see Uppy React docs.

Does Uppy support S3 uploads?

Yes, there is an S3 plugin, please check out the docs for more.

Do I need to install a special service/server for Uppy? Can I use it with Rails/Node/Go/PHP?

Yes, whatever you want on the backend will work with @uppy/xhr-upload plugin, since it just does a POST or PUT request. Here’s a PHP backend example.

If you want resumability with the Tus plugin, use one of the tus server implementations 👌🏼

And you’ll need @uppy/companion if you’d like your users to be able to pick files from Instagram, Google Drive, Dropbox or via direct URLs (with more services coming).