Serve Assets

The @cesdk/node package bundles the core WASM engine files, font fallback files, and the emoji font directly. No additional setup is required to initialize the engine, render text with full Unicode and emoji coverage, and use its APIs offline.

@cesdk/node is offline-first: the default baseURL resolves to the package’s own assets/ directory (file://<pkg>/assets/), so the engine boots without reaching the IMG.LY CDN. You only need to configure assets when you register content asset sources (stickers, shapes, typefaces, filters, and so on) or want to serve the bundled core and font assets from your own location.

For rendering-only workflows (loading existing scenes and exporting to PDF, PNG, or video), the engine loads scene-referenced assets directly from their embedded URLs. You only need to configure asset paths if you want to serve those assets from your own server or CDN instead of the copies bundled in the package.

Understanding Asset Categories#

The imgly-assets.zip contains directories organized by function:

Engine-Level Assets#

The engine uses additional assets for font fallback (Unicode character coverage) and emoji rendering. By default, these load from the assets/ directory bundled inside the @cesdk/node package, so they work offline without reaching the IMG.LY CDN. When you set baseURL for your engine, font fallback files and the emoji font are loaded from that location instead:

• Font fallback files — Used when text contains characters not covered by the selected font. Located at {baseURL}/fonts/font-{index}.ttf.
• Emoji font — The default emoji font (NotoColorEmoji.ttf). Located at {baseURL}/emoji/NotoColorEmoji.ttf.

The fonts/ and emoji/ directories ship inside the package and are also included in the imgly-assets.zip download. When you self-host and point baseURL at your own location, ensure these directories are present there.

Self-Hosting Assets#

Using Local Filesystem#

Use Node.js pathToFileURL() to load assets directly from disk:

import CreativeEngine from '@cesdk/node';
import path from 'path';
import { pathToFileURL } from 'url';

const engine = await CreativeEngine.init({
  license: 'YOUR_CESDK_LICENSE_KEY',
  baseURL:
    pathToFileURL(path.resolve(`./cesdk-assets/${CreativeEngine.version}`))
      .href + '/'
});

// Use the engine for processing
// ...

// Clean up when done
engine.dispose();

The file:// protocol loads assets directly from the filesystem without network overhead.

Using Your Own CDN#

If you prefer serving assets from your own CDN:

import CreativeEngine from '@cesdk/node';

const engine = await CreativeEngine.init({
  license: 'YOUR_CESDK_LICENSE_KEY',
  baseURL: `https://cdn.yourdomain.com/cesdk/${CreativeEngine.version}/`
});

Register Asset Sources#

To use the default content sources (stickers, shapes, typefaces, filters, and so on) server-side, extract the archive, point baseURL at it, and register each source you need directly through the engine API. This is the same asset API used in the browser; the @cesdk/cesdk-js/plugins asset-source plugins are editor-only and are not used with @cesdk/node.

Or download and extract it from the command line:

# Download and extract the content assets for your SDK version
curl -O https://cdn.img.ly/packages/imgly/cesdk-node/1.78.0/imgly-assets.zip
mkdir -p cesdk-assets/1.78.0
unzip imgly-assets.zip -d cesdk-assets/1.78.0/
rm imgly-assets.zip

engine.getBaseURL() returns the configured base, so you can point each source at its content.json relative to it:

import CreativeEngine from '@cesdk/node';
import path from 'path';
import { pathToFileURL } from 'url';

const engine = await CreativeEngine.init({
  license: 'YOUR_CESDK_LICENSE_KEY',
  baseURL:
    pathToFileURL(path.resolve(`./cesdk-assets/${CreativeEngine.version}`))
      .href + '/'
});

const baseURL = engine.getBaseURL();

for (const sourceId of [
  'ly.img.sticker',
  'ly.img.vector.shape',
  'ly.img.typeface',
  'ly.img.filter'
]) {
  await engine.asset.addLocalAssetSourceFromJSONURI(
    `${baseURL}${sourceId}/content.json`
  );
}

Point baseURL at a file:// path for local hosting or at your own CDN. For the full list of source IDs and matcher filtering, see the Default Assets guide.

Troubleshooting#

File URL Formatting#

When using file:// URLs:

• Use path.resolve() to get absolute paths
• URLs must end with a trailing slash for directories
• Always use pathToFileURL() from the url module instead of string concatenation

API Reference#