While much of Cloudinary's functionality is focused on images and videos, we also support uploading, managing, and delivering almost any other file type.
We refer to other file types as 'raw' files in our documentation and you can learn more about how to upload and manage raw files in our Upload API documentation.
Using Cloudinary features with raw assets
In general, Cloudinary's transformations features are usable only with assets of type 'image', or 'video' (including audio files), but Cloudinary also has specific support for some operations on raw files.
For example, Cloudinary's Aspose Document Conversion Add-on can create an image preview for some types of documents, and you can deliver both the image and the original document from your account.
Formats limited for delivery on free accounts
Please note, that to reduce the chances of malware or other potentially harmful files being distributed via the Cloudinary service, the following file formats are, by default, blocked for public delivery for free accounts:
- zip, rar, tagz, and other archive formats
If you are on a free plan and need to deliver files in those formats, you can navigate to the Security tab of Settings in the Management Console and select to 'Allow delivery of PDF and ZIP files'. Additionally, these delivery limitations are removed when you upgrade to a paid plan.
Formats with 'attachment' delivery only
To protect the integrity of your account and our service, some file types that can be rendered "inline" by a browser are delivered from Cloudinary with a content-disposition HTTP header indicating that browsers should download the file and store it, instead of opening it directly.
This affects HTML and SVG content primarily, and it's expected that such files will be downloaded instead of opened directly by a web browser.
For SVG images, it's possible to deliver the file inline if you use the "sanitize" flag to request that the SVG is processed to remove tags that could contain harmful content when rendered inline: https://cloudinary.com/documentation/transformation_reference#fl_sanitize
You can also convert the SVG to another file format, and the image will be delivered directly in that format.
Formats limited for delivery on all accounts
There is also a small number of file extensions which are restricted from delivery on all Cloudinary accounts for security reasons, and you can learn more about those restrictions here:
Comments
4 comments
Thanks for your answer Stephen.
You just forgot to say that pdf and others files format are blocked for delivery for free accounts.
See: https://cloudinary.com/documentation/image_delivery_options#blocked_delivery_formats_for_security
Hi Torres,
Thank you for your comment! We've added this additional information to the article.
If you'd like to enable the PDFs delivery option on your account please contact us with an example PDF you'd like to deliver.
Best regards,
Millie
Can we upload an SRT file?
Hi @Sayuri,
Yes, absolutely - the SRT file can be uploaded as a "raw" asset into Cloudinary.
If you're uploading via the Media Library UI then we will automatically detect the filetype and assign the resource_type as "raw" for the SRT file upon upload.
If you're uploading via the API, then you would need to either set resource_type:"raw" explicitly in your upload call or pass "auto" as the resource_type and let Cloudinary assign the right resource_type upon upload.
Please see the following section of the documentation with details on uploading non-image/video assets as raw.
https://cloudinary.com/documentation/upload_images#uploading_non_media_files_as_raw_files
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