Sprites

A Pokémon response carries its sprite URLs, but reaching them costs a request. getPokemonSpriteUrl builds the same URLs offline, from an ID alone:

import { getPokemonSpriteUrl } from 'pokenode-ts';

getPokemonSpriteUrl(25);
// https://raw.githubusercontent.com/PokeAPI/sprites/master/sprites/pokemon/25.png

getPokemonSpriteUrl(25, { variant: 'official-artwork' });
// .../sprites/pokemon/other/official-artwork/25.png

getPokemonSpriteUrl(25, { variant: 'showdown', back: true, shiny: true });
// .../sprites/pokemon/other/showdown/back/shiny/25.gif

Sprites are keyed by ID — a name is not addressable. Reach for getPokemonByName first if that is all you have.

Variants

variant	Set	Format	shiny	back	female
default	The in-game sprites	PNG	✅	✅	✅
official-artwork	Ken Sugimori artwork	PNG	✅	❌	❌
home	Pokémon HOME renders	PNG	✅	❌	✅
dream-world	Dream World artwork	SVG	❌	❌	✅
showdown	Animated Showdown sprites	GIF	✅	✅	✅

A combination a set does not publish is a type error, not a broken URL:

getPokemonSpriteUrl(25, { variant: 'official-artwork', back: true });
//                                                     ~~~~ there are no back-facing artworks

WARNING

The repository does not hold every combination for every Pokémon. Recent generations have no back-facing sprites, and a species that looks the same in both genders has no female one. This builds a well-formed URL — it does not promise the file exists. Fall back to the sprite URLs on the response, or to null, when an image fails to load.

Where the URLs point

Sprites live in PokeAPI/sprites, served over raw.githubusercontent.com from the master branch — the same host the API's own responses use. The root is exported as BASE_URL.SPRITES if you need to build a path this helper does not cover, such as an item or a per-generation sprite.