Read About Cloudinary and its pricing.

1. Create a Cloudinary Account

Sign up at Cloudinary and create a new account if you don't have one.

2. Install Cloudinary SDK

You can install the Cloudinary SDK using npm or yarn:

npm install cloudinary

3. Configure Cloudinary

You can create a configuration file to hold your Cloudinary credentials. It’s good practice to keep these in environment variables.

Create a .env.local file in your project root and add your Cloudinary credentials:

CLOUDINARY_URL=cloudinary://:@

4. Set Up Cloudinary in Your Application

// utils/cloudinary.js
import { v2 as cloudinary } from 'cloudinary';

cloudinary.config({
  cloud_name: process.env.CLOUDINARY_CLOUD_NAME,
  api_key: process.env.CLOUDINARY_API_KEY,
  api_secret: process.env.CLOUDINARY_API_SECRET,
});

export const uploadImage = async (file) => {
  try {
    const result = await cloudinary.uploader.upload(file, {
      folder: 'your_folder_name', // optional
    });
    return result.secure_url; // Return the URL of the uploaded image
  } catch (error) {
    console.error('Cloudinary upload error:', error);
    throw new Error('Upload failed');
  }
};

5. Use the Upload Function

// pages/api/upload.js
import { uploadImage } from '../../utils/cloudinary';

export default async function handler(req, res) {
  if (req.method === 'POST') {
    const { file } = req.body; // Assume you're sending a file in the body

    try {
      const url = await uploadImage(file);
      res.status(200).json({ url });
    } catch (error) {
      res.status(500).json({ error: error.message });
    }
  } else {
    res.setHeader('Allow', ['POST']);
    res.status(405).end(`Method ${req.method} Not Allowed`);
  }
}

6. Upload from the Frontend

// components/ImageUpload.js
import { useState } from 'react';

const ImageUpload = () => {
  const [file, setFile] = useState(null);
  const [imageUrl, setImageUrl] = useState('');

  const handleFileChange = (event) => {
    setFile(event.target.files[0]);
  };

  const handleSubmit = async (event) => {
    event.preventDefault();
    const formData = new FormData();
    formData.append('file', file);

    const res = await fetch('/api/upload', {
      method: 'POST',
      body: formData,
    });

    const data = await res.json();
    if (data.url) {
      setImageUrl(data.url);
    } else {
      console.error('Upload failed:', data.error);
    }
  };

  return (
    

Upload {imageUrl && }

7. Test Your Setup

Run your Next.js application and test the image upload functionality.

Conclusion

You should now have a working integration of Cloudinary in your Next.js app! If you have any specific requirements or need further customization, feel free to ask!