Upload image from URL to Firebase Storage

Question

I'm wondering how to upload file onto Firebase's storage via URL instead of input (for example). I'm scrapping images from a website and retrieving their URLS. I want to pass those URLS through a foreach statement and upload them to Firebase's storage. Right now, I have the firebase upload-via-input working with this code:

var auth = firebase.auth();
var storageRef = firebase.storage().ref();

function handleFileSelect(evt) {
  evt.stopPropagation();
  evt.preventDefault();
 var file = evt.target.files[0];


  var metadata = {
    'contentType': file.type
  };

  // Push to child path.
  var uploadTask = storageRef.child('images/' + file.name).put(file, metadata);

  // Listen for errors and completion of the upload.
  // [START oncomplete]
  uploadTask.on('state_changed', null, function(error) {
    // [START onfailure]
    console.error('Upload failed:', error);
    // [END onfailure]
  }, function() {
    console.log('Uploaded',uploadTask.snapshot.totalBytes,'bytes.');
    console.log(uploadTask.snapshot.metadata);
    var url = uploadTask.snapshot.metadata.downloadURLs[0];
    console.log('File available at', url);
    // [START_EXCLUDE]
    document.getElementById('linkbox').innerHTML = '<a href="' +  url + '">Click For File</a>';}

Question what do I replace

var file = evt.target.files[0];

with to make it work with external URL instead of a manual upload process?

var file = "http://i.imgur.com/eECefMJ.jpg"; doesn't work!

Answer 1

Javascript solution to this using fetch command.

var remoteimageurl = "https://example.com/images/photo.jpg"
var filename = "images/photo.jpg"

fetch(remoteimageurl).then(res => {
  return res.blob();
}).then(blob => {
    //uploading blob to firebase storage
  firebase.storage().ref().child(filename).put(blob).then(function(snapshot) {
    return snapshot.ref.getDownloadURL()
 }).then(url => {
   console.log("Firebase storage image uploaded : ", url); 
  }) 
}).catch(error => {
  console.error(error);
});