How to download an image from URL in Node.js

Updated Jul 12, 2023#node #snippets

Downloading an image from a URL refers to the process of obtaining an image file stored on a remote server and saving it on a local device. This is a common task for many Node.js applications.

In general, downloading an image from a URL involves sending a request to the server that hosts the image, receiving the response containing the binary data of the file, and then writing that data to a file.

Using built-in http(s) module

In Node.js, you can download an image from a URL using the built-in http or https module and the fs (file system) module. Here is an example code snippet to download an image from a URL:

const https = require('https');
const fs = require('fs');

const imageUrl = 'https://example.com/image.jpg';
const imageName = 'image.jpg';

const file = fs.createWriteStream(imageName);

https.get(imageUrl, response => {
  response.pipe(file);

  file.on('finish', () => {
    file.close();
    console.log(`Image downloaded as ${imageName}`);
  });
}).on('error', err => {
  fs.unlink(imageName);
  console.error(`Error downloading image: ${err.message}`);
});

Using Axios

You can download an image from URL in Node.js using Axios (101k ⭐) by making a GET request to the image URL and writing the response data to a file using the fs module’s writeFile method. Here’s an example code snippet:

const axios = require('axios');
const fs = require('fs');

async function downloadImage(url, filename) {
  const response = await axios.get(url, { responseType: 'arraybuffer' });

  fs.writeFile(filename, response.data, (err) => {
    if (err) throw err;
    console.log('Image downloaded successfully!');
  });
}

downloadImage('https://example.com/image.jpg', 'image.jpg');

Using Node-fetch

Node-fetch (8.4k ⭐) is a light-weight module that brings Fetch API to Node.js. Fetch API is an interface that allows you to make HTTP requests and receive responses from the server. You can use node-fetch to download images, JSON data, HTML pages, and other resources from the web.

// Need to install node-fetch
const fetch = require("node-fetch");
const fs = require("fs");
const path = require("path");

// The URL of the image to download
const imageURL = "https://example.com/image.jpg";

// The path of the directory to save the image
const dirPath = "./images";

// The name of the image file
const fileName = "image.jpg";

// Create the directory if it does not exist
if (!fs.existsSync(dirPath)) {
  fs.mkdirSync(dirPath);
}

// Use fetch to get the image data as a buffer
fetch(imageURL)
  .then((response) => response.buffer())
  .then((buffer) => {
    // Write the buffer to a file
    fs.writeFile(path.join(dirPath, fileName), buffer, (err) => {
      if (err) {
        console.error(err);
      } else {
        console.log("Image downloaded successfully");
      }
    });
  })
  .catch((error) => {
    console.error(error);
  });

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