​
Setup Astro

To create a new Astro project go ahead and run this command in the terminal:

npm create astro@latest pinata-astro

You can select which options you prefer, but for this exmaple we’ll use the following:

tmpl   How would you like to start your new project?
       Empty

  ts   Do you plan to write TypeScript?
       Yes

 use   How strict should TypeScript be?
       Strict

deps   Install dependencies?
       Yes

 git   Initialize a new git repository?
       Yes

After completing the project setup we can go ahead and cd into the repo and install pinata.

cd pinata-astro && npm i pinata

Since we want to keep our API key private we will need to make sure our code is deployed server side, and we can use several different adapter options which you can view here. We also need a UI framework to handle our upload form, and there are many to choose from here. We’ll use vercel and svelte for this tutorial, and you can install them like so.

npx astro add vercel svelte

This should install the dependencies and alter the astro.config.mjs for us.

​
Setup Pinata

In the src folder make a new folder called utils, and inside there make a file called pinata.ts with the following contents:

src/utils/pinata.ts
import { PinataSDK } from "pinata";

export const pinata = new PinataSDK({
	pinataJwt: import.meta.env.PINATA_JWT,
	pinataGateway: import.meta.env.GATEWAY_URL,
});

This will create and export an instance of the Pinata SDK using environment variables, and to set those up make a new file at the root of the project called .env with the following values:

PINATA_JWT= # The Pinata JWT API key we got earlier
GATEWAY_URL= # The Gateway domain we grabbed earlier, formatting just as we copied it from the app

​
Create Client Side Form

In the src folder make another folder called components, then inside there make file called UploadForm.svelte.

src/components/UploadForm.svelte
<script lang="ts">
let url: string;
let isUploading: boolean;

async function submit(e: SubmitEvent) {
	isUploading = true;
	e.preventDefault();
	const formData = new FormData(e.currentTarget as HTMLFormElement);
	const request = await fetch("/api/upload", {
		method: "POST",
		body: formData,
	});
	const response = await request.json();
	url = response.data;
	isUploading = false;
}
</script>

<style>
  img {
    max-width: 500px;
  }
  form {
    display: flex;
    flex-direction: column;
    justify-content: center;
    align-items: center;
    gap: 2rem;
  }
  button {
   background-color: #6E57FF;
   color: white;
   border: none;
   border-radius: 5px;
   padding: 0.75rem 1.5rem;
   font-weight: bold;
  }
</style>

<form on:submit={submit}>
  <input type="file" id="file" name="file" required />
  <button>{isUploading ? "Uploading..." : "Upload"}</button>
  {#if url}
    <img src={url} alt="pinnie" />
  {/if}
</form>

This component creates a <form> with a file <input> as well as a <button> to send it. The form will trigger the submit function, which takes our form data and makes an API request to our server side code. Once complete the API will send response with a url that we can use in the <img> tag to display it on the page.

​
Server Side API Route

In the src/pages folder make a new folder called api and inside there make a file called upload.ts. Paste the following code inside it:

import type { APIRoute } from "astro";
import { pinata } from "../../utils/pinata";

export const POST: APIRoute = async ({ request }) => {
	const data = await request.formData();
	const file = data.get("file") as File;
	if (!file) {
		return new Response(
			JSON.stringify({
				message: "Missing file",
			}),
			{ status: 400 },
		);
	}
	const { cid } = await pinata.upload.file(file);
	const url = await pinata.gateways.createSignedURL({
		cid: cid,
		expires: 360,
	});
	return new Response(
		JSON.stringify({
			data: url,
		}),
		{ status: 200 },
	);
};

This simple API route will parse the incoming formData and get the file we attached. If there isn’t a file attached we’ll send a error response. Otherwise we’ll upload the file using the SDK method pinata.upload.file and deconstruct the response to get the cid. With that cid we can use the createSignedURL method to create a temporary URL with an expiration of 360 seconds, which we can then send back to the client.

​
Add Component to the Page

The last step here is to update the src/pages/index.astro file with our new component!

src/pages/index.astro
---
import UploadForm from "../components/UploadForm.svelte";
---

<html lang="en">
	<head>
		<meta charset="utf-8" />
		<link rel="icon" type="image/svg+xml" href="/favicon.svg" />
		<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width" />
		<meta name="generator" content={Astro.generator} />
		<title>Astro</title>
	</head>
	<body>
		<h1>Astro + Pinata</h1>
		<UploadForm client:load />
	</body>
</html>