Cloudinary

Registration and secrets

Register a new free account at Cloudinary.

Go into the Dashboard and look for

• Cloud name
• API Key
• API Secret

Open appsettings.json and add the template for the keys

"CloudinarySettings" : {
  "CloudName": "Set the key in secrets. View README for more info.",
  "ApiKey": "Set the key in secrets. View README for more info.",
  "ApiSecret": "Set the key in secrets. View README for more info."
}

Using the console create the three key in secret storage.

dotnet user-secrets set "CloudinarySettings:CloudName" "******"
dotnet user-secrets set "CloudinarySettings:ApiKey" "******"
dotnet user-secrets set "CloudinarySettings:ApiSecret" "******"

If the ApiSecret starts with - or -- there is a bug in the command line that will result in a message:

Unrecognized option 'your ApiSecret value'

Workaround: create a file cloudinarysettings.json containing your settings.

{
  "CloudinarySettings": {
    "CloudName": "******",
    "ApiKey": "******",
    "ApiSecret": "******"
  }
}

Pipe the configuration file in secret storage

cat ./cloudinarysettings.json | dotnet user-secrets set

Remember to put this file in gitignore or in a directory not in source control.

Helper class

Create a new class Helpers/CloudinarySettings.cs with properties for the Cloudinary keys.

public class CloudinarySettings
{
    public string CloudName { get; set; }
    public string ApiKey { get; set; }
    public string ApiSecret { get; set; }
}

Open Startup.cs and add to ConfigureServices the configuration for the settings helper so that it is available for injection.

...
services.AddCors();
services.Configure<CloudinarySettings>(Configuration.GetSection("CloudinarySettings"));
services.AddAutoMapper();
...

Change the Photo class

When we upload a photo to Cloudinary the documentation says that the call returns a JSON object. Inside this object we have a key public_id. We need to store this key inside our photo object.

Open Photo.cs and add a prop for public_id.

public class Photo
{
    ...
    public string PublicId { get; set; }
}

Add a new migration.

dotnet ef migrations add AddedPhotoId

Check the migration code and if everithing is ok apply it to the DB.

dotnet ef database update

Cloudinary package

CTRL+SHIFT+p Nuget Add Package

Search CloudinaryDotNet and add the latest version (at the time of writing it was 1.3.1).

Add a package for Newtonsoft.Json and add the latest version (11.0.2).

Restore to install the new packages.

dotnet restore

Now run the application to check that it builds correctly.