Generate Random Images From Unsplash Without Using The API
June 24, 2018 by Andreas Wik
In case you haven’t heard already – Unsplash is the place to go when you need royalty free photos to use in your projects, whether it’s for commercial use or not. I use it myself quite often, for large background images. So does https://pixelarity.com, just to name an example.
While they do have a great API for developers, they also give you the option to simply access random images via URL’s.
Here’s an example, generating a completely random image from their massive storage:
https://source.unsplash.com/random
https://source.unsplash.com/random
Specific User
We can also generate a random image from a specific user. The URL format would be like so:
https://source.unsplash.com/user/USERNAME
Click this link below to generate a random image from the user wsanter:
https://source.unsplash.com/user/wsanter
Specific Sizes
There’s also an option to set the size of the image you want generated. Like so:
https://source.unsplash.com/random/WIDTHxHEIGHT
Let’s generate a random image with the width and height of 300px:
https://source.unsplash.com/random/300×300
Random Image From Search Term
This one is really cool. You can generate images from search terms. Let’s search for city and night (so fkn creative):
https://source.unsplash.com/random/?city,night
https://source.unsplash.com/random/?city,night
You place the search terms at the end of the URL, so before you could add the size if you’d like:
https://source.unsplash.com/random/900×700/?fruit
https://source.unsplash.com/random/900×700/?fruit
An Example With JavaScript
Here’s a simple CodePen I put together illustrating how you could use this dynamically with JavaScript:
See the Pen zaaXEZ by Andreas Wik (@andreaswik) on CodePen.
For a full list of features – check out the Unsplash Source documentation.
Have fun!
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