CanvasRenderingContext2D.scale

The CanvasRenderingContext2D.scale() method of the Canvas 2D API adds a scaling transformation to the canvas units by x horizontally and by y vertically.

By default, one unit on the canvas is exactly one pixel. If we apply, for instance, a scaling factor of 0.5, the resulting unit would become 0.5 pixels and so shapes would be drawn at half size. In a similar way setting the scaling factor to 2.0 would increase the unit size and one unit now becomes two pixels. This results in shapes being drawn twice as large.

Syntax

void ctx.scale(x, y);

Parameters

x

Scaling factor in the horizontal direction. A negative value flips pixels across the vertical axis.

y

Scaling factor in the vertical direction. A negative value flips pixels across the horizontal axis.

Examples

Using the scale method

This is just a simple code snippet which uses the scale method.

HTML

<canvas id="canvas"></canvas>

JavaScript

var canvas = document.getElementById('canvas');
var ctx = canvas.getContext('2d');

ctx.scale(10, 3);
ctx.fillRect(10, 10, 10, 10);

// reset current transformation matrix to the identity matrix
ctx.setTransform(1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0);

Edit the code below and see your changes update live in the canvas:

Playable code

<canvas id="canvas" width="400" height="200" class="playable-canvas"></canvas>
<div class="playable-buttons">
  <input id="edit" type="button" value="Edit" />
  <input id="reset" type="button" value="Reset" />
</div>
<textarea id="code" class="playable-code">
ctx.scale(10, 3);
ctx.fillRect(10,10,10,10);
ctx.setTransform(1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0);</textarea>

var canvas = document.getElementById("canvas");
var ctx = canvas.getContext("2d");
var textarea = document.getElementById("code");
var reset = document.getElementById("reset");
var edit = document.getElementById("edit");
var code = textarea.value;

function drawCanvas() {
  ctx.clearRect(0, 0, canvas.width, canvas.height);
  eval(textarea.value);
}

reset.addEventListener("click", function() {
  textarea.value = code;
  drawCanvas();
});

edit.addEventListener("click", function() {
  textarea.focus();
})

textarea.addEventListener("input", drawCanvas);
window.addEventListener("load", drawCanvas);

Using scale to flip horizontally or vertically

You can use ctx.scale(-1, 1) to flip the context horizontally and ctx.scale(1, -1) to flip it vertically.

Playable code2

<canvas id="canvas" width="400" height="200" class="playable-canvas"></canvas>
<div class="playable-buttons">
  <input id="edit" type="button" value="Edit" />
  <input id="reset" type="button" value="Reset" />
</div>
<textarea id="code" class="playable-code">
ctx.scale(-1, 1);
ctx.font = "48px serif";
ctx.fillText("Hello world!", -320, 120);
ctx.setTransform(1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0);</textarea>

var canvas = document.getElementById("canvas");
var ctx = canvas.getContext("2d");
var textarea = document.getElementById("code");
var reset = document.getElementById("reset");
var edit = document.getElementById("edit");
var code = textarea.value;

function drawCanvas() {
  ctx.clearRect(0, 0, canvas.width, canvas.height);
  eval(textarea.value);
}

reset.addEventListener("click", function() {
  textarea.value = code;
  drawCanvas();
});

edit.addEventListener("click", function() {
  textarea.focus();
})

textarea.addEventListener("input", drawCanvas);
window.addEventListener("load", drawCanvas);

Specifications

Browser compatibilityUpdate compatibility data on GitHub

See also

• The interface defining this method: CanvasRenderingContext2D