Overview
Filestack’s Processing Engine is very powerful system that allows developers to transform various types of files,including images, documents and videos. Additionally we provide insights into the contents of the files through our Intelligence System
With Filestack you can transform your files either in real time, by appending parameters to the URLs, or asynchronously using Workflows.
If you need to give your users ability to transform images, you can use Transformation UI to provide them with beautiful UI and and great experience manipulating their files.
All stored files in your application are available over the Filestack CDN, and each file’s URL can be modified with processing “tasks” that modify the requested resource. Each task has its own set of parameters that are documented on this page. Our API Clients provide programmatic access to construct these transformation URLs.
Processing tasks can be chained together in the same URL by separating them with forward slashes. All tasks follow the structure of TASK=option:value, where option:value pairs are comma separated.
Quick Example
For example, our uploaded file has following URL:
https://cdn.filestackcontent.com/pdn7PhZdT02GoYZCVYeF
In order to resize it, we can simply add resize task to the URL. Like this:
https://cdn.filestackcontent.com/resize=width:300/pdn7PhZdT02GoYZCVYeF
You may chain together as many tasks as you like, presuming their types logically follow. Tasks are executed in the order they appear in the URL, and are separated by forward slashes.
Let’s add more tasks to our image - sepia (with parameters) and polaroid:
https://cdn.filestackcontent.com/resize=width:300/sepia=tone:80/polaroid/pdn7PhZdT02GoYZCVYeF
Transformation Sources
You execute processing requests with either a Filestack Handle, a Filestack Storage Alias, or a Public URL. If using a URL or storage alias, your API key must be prepended to the task chain, like this:
Filestack Handle
For every uploaded file you will receive unique URL that points to Filestack CDN. You can use that URL in your application (as is or transformed using Filestack Processing API).
Unique part of the URL, is what we call handle. This is the unique identifier of the file in Filestack system. You can use handle when you interact with Processing Engine:
https://cdn.filestackcontent.com/resize=width:400/HANDLEFilestack Storage Alias
Storage aliases are a premium feature that allow you to use Filestack transformations and other add-ons with files not uploaded through Filestack. Storage aliases can be used with any of our supported cloud storage providers and, once configured, work as any other Filestack URL but require prepending your API key to the alias:
https://cdn.filestackcontent.com/API-KEY/resize=width:400/src://STORAGE_ALIASPublic URL
Public URL is any publicly available URL in the internet. In order to use external URLs with Processing Engine you might prepend your tasks with API key:
https://cdn.filestackcontent.com/API-KEY/resize=width:400/URLAPI Reference
You can view all tasks and their parameters in the Processing API reference.