Fabric.js is a framework that makes it easy to work with HTML5 canvas element. It is an interactive object model on top of canvas element. It is also an SVG-to-canvas parser.

Using Fabric.js, you can create and populate objects on canvas; objects like simple geometrical shapes — rectangles, circles, ellipses, polygons, or more complex shapes consisting of hundreds or thousands of simple paths. You can then scale, move, and rotate these objects with the mouse; modify their properties — color, transparency, z-index, etc. You can also manipulate these objects altogether — grouping them with a simple mouse selection.

Contributions are very much welcome!

Goals

• Unit tested (1050 tests at the moment)
• Modular (~20 small "classes")
• Cross-browser
• Fast
• Encapsulated in one object
• No browser sniffing for critical functionality
• Runs under ES5 strict mode

Supported browsers

• Firefox 2+
• Safari 3+
• Opera 9.64+
• Chrome (all versions should work)
• IE9+

With help of Explorer Canvas

• IE8 (incomplete — about 17 failing tests at the moment)
• IE7,6 (incomplete - about 27 failing tests at the moment)

You can run automated unit tests right in the browser.

History

Fabric.js started as a foundation for design editor on printio.ru — interactive online store with ability to create your own designs. The idea was to create Javascript-based editor, which would make it easy to manipulate vector shapes and images on T-Shirts. Since performance was one of the most critical requirements, we chose canvas over SVG. While SVG is excellent with static shapes, it's not as performant as canvas when it comes to dynamic manipulation of objects (movement, scaling, rotation, etc.). Fabric.js was heavily inspired by Ernest Delgado's canvas experiment. In fact, code from Ernest's experiment was the foundation of an entire framework. Later, Fabric.js grew into a collection of distinct object types and got an SVG-to-canvas parser.

Building

1. Install Sprockets

    $ gem install --remote sprockets
   

2. Build distribution file

    $ sprocketize fabric.js > dist/all.js
   

3. Create a minified distribution file

    # Using YUICompressor
    $ java -jar lib/yuicompressor-2.4.2.jar dist/all.js -o dist/all.min.js
    
    # or Google Closure Compiler
    $ java -jar lib/google_closure_compiler.jar --js dist/all.js --js_output_file dist/all.min.js
   

4. Optionally, you can build documentation

    $ java -jar lib/jsdoc-toolkit/jsrun.jar lib/jsdoc-toolkit/app/run.js -a -t=lib/jsdoc-toolkit/templates/jsdoc -d=docs fabric.js src/ src/util/
   

Demos

• Kitchen-sink (Main demo)
• Miscellaneous demos
• Benchmark (quantity)
• Benchmark (animation)
• Benchmark (Raphael vs. Fabric; simple shapes)
• Benchmark (Raphael vs. Fabric; complex shape 1)
• Benchmark (Raphael vs. Fabric; complex shape 2)

Documentation

Documentation is always available at http://kangax.github.com/fabric.js/docs/. You can also build it locally, following step 4 from the "Building" section of this README.

Also see presentation from BK.js and presentation from Falsy Values for an overview of fabric.js, how it works, and its features.

Examples of use

Adding red rectangle to canvas

<canvas id="canvas" width="300" height="300"></canvas>  
...

var canvas = new fabric.Canvas('canvas');

var rect = new fabric.Rect({
  top: 100,
  left: 100,
  width: 60,
  height: 70,
  fill: 'red'
});

canvas.add(rect);

Credits

• Ernest Delgado for the original idea of manipulating images on canvas.
• Maxim "hakunin" Chernyak for ideas, and help with various parts of the library.
• Sergey Nisnevich for help with geometry logic.

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2008-2011 Bitsonnet

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Staying in touch

Follow @fabric.js or @kangax on twitter. Questions, suggestions — fabric.js on Google Groups.

TODO

• All methods under fabric.util.* (except misc.js) need unit tests
• SVG-to-canvas parser needs to support more SVG declarations (e.g. radial gradients are not yet supported)
• IE<9 buggy with drawing images (images are rendered, but can't be moved/scaled/rotated)
• Need more performance tests vs. Raphael.js (to be able to determine which one is better at which times; e.g. static vs. dynamic, animation, etc.)
• Get rid of Cufon, only borrowing its text rendering logic (a lot of code from Cufon is irrelevant to fabric).