Tristan Dunn

Rendering SVG on Canvas

I’ve been looking into SVG rendering on canvas and a lot of people recommend using canvg. I’m not trying to dynamically generate the SVG, manipulate it in any special way, or use any advanced SVG features. So, as far as I can tell for basic rendering in modern browsers you can just render the SVG as an image.

var image   = new Image();
var canvas  = document.querySelector("canvas");
var context = canvas.getContext("2d");


image.onload = function() {
  context.drawImage(image, 0, 0);
};
image.src = "/path/to/image.svg";
Drawing an SVG image to a <canvas> element.

You should probably prefetch or inline the SVG assets, but that’s beyond the scope here.

Retina Screens

If you’re on a retina screen the first thing you’ll notice is that it’s blurry. Luckily it’s an easy fix with three simple steps.

var image   = new Image();
var ratio   = window.devicePixelRatio || 1;
var canvas  = document.querySelector("canvas");
var context = canvas.getContext("2d");


// 1. Ensure the element size stays the same.
canvas.style.width  = canvas.width + "px";
canvas.style.height = canvas.height + "px";


// 2. Increase the canvas dimensions by the pixel ratio.
canvas.width  *= ratio;
canvas.height *= ratio;


image.onload = function() {
  // 3. Scale the context by the pixel ratio.
  context.scale(ratio, ratio);
  context.drawImage(image, 0, 0);
};
image.src = "/path/to/image.svg";
Scaling the <canvas> element to handle retina screens.

An added benefit with the scaling is that you can apply a multiplier for user-specified scaling, via zoom or mousewheel events. And since it’s using SVG it stays incredibly clear.

Resources