Hono is a lightweight web framework for Deno and Node.js. It is designed to be fast, simple, and easy to use. In this framework guide we’ll show you how to create a server that sends Presigned URLs to a client app for a secure client side upload flow. We would highly recommend pairing this guide with the React framework guide!

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Installation

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Create an API Key and get Gateway URL

To create an API key, visit the Keys Page and click the “New Key” button in the top right. Once you do that you can select if you want your key to be admin or if you want to scope the privileges of the keys to certain endpoints or limit the number of uses. Make those selections, then give the key a name at the bottom, and click create key. Once you have created the keys, you will be shown your API Key Info. This will contain your Api Key, API Secret, and your JWT. Click “Copy All” and save them somewhere safe!
The API keys are only shown once, so be sure to copy them somewhere safe!
After you have your API key, you will want to get your Gateway domain. When you create a Pinata account, you’ll automatically have a Gateway created for you! To see it, simply visit the Gateways Page see it listed there. The gateway domains are randomly generated and might look something like this: 
aquamarine-casual-tarantula-177.mypinata.cloud

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Start up Hono Project

Run the command below to make a new Hono project: 
npm create hono@latest pinata-server
After doing so you should see a list of different deployment templates. We would recommend using Cloudflare Workers which is what we’ll follow through with in this guide. After selecting that cd into the project and install the Pinata SDK. 
cd pinata-server
npm i pinata
After making the project, create a .dev.vars file in the root of the project and put in the following variables: 
PINATA_JWT=
GATEWAY_URL
Use the JWT from the API key creation in the previous step as well as the Gateway Domain. The format of the Gateway domain should be mydomain.mypinata.cloud.

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Implement the Server Code

Inside the src/index.ts file paste in the following code:
src/index.ts
import { Hono } from 'hono'
import { cors } from 'hono/cors';
import { PinataSDK } from 'pinata'

interface Bindings {
  PINATA_JWT: string;
  GATEWAY_URL: string;
}

const app = new Hono<{ Bindings: Bindings }>()

app.use(cors())

app.get('/', (c) => {
  return c.text('Hello Hono!')
})

app.get('/presigned_url', async (c) => {

	// Handle Auth

  const pinata = new PinataSDK({
    pinataJwt: c.env.PINATA_JWT,
    pinataGateway: c.env.GATEWAY_URL
  })

  const url = await pinata.upload.public.createSignedURL({
    expires: 60 // Last for 60 seconds
  })

  return c.json({ url }, { status: 200 })
})

export default app
This creates just two simple endpoints:
  • / - A home route that just returns Hello Hono!
  • /presigned_url - A route that will return a Presigned URL that is only valid for 60 seconds which our client can use to upload
As with most server frameworks, you will likely want to protect your API route with an auth layer. You would place there where the comment says // Handle Auth

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Usage

Test it out by running the following command in your terminal 
npm run dev
You should see the console say it’s serving at http://localhost:8787. While this is running, in a separate terminal window run this curl to test the API endpoint: 
curl http://localhost:8787/presigned_url
If successful you shoud have a JSON object like the following 
{"url":"https://uploads.pinata.cloud/v3/files/redacted?X-Algorithm=PINATA2&X-Date=1743695529&X-Expires=60&X-Method=%5B%22HEAD%22%2C%22PATCH%22%2C%22POST%22%5D&X-Upload-Option-Network=public&X-User-ID=redacted&X-Signature=redacted"}

Continue to React Guide

To see how you can use Presigned URLs with a client side framework check out the React guide