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Django FileResponse

last modified January 9, 2023

Django FileResponse tutorial shows how to send a file with FileResponse in Django.

Django

Django is a high-level Python web framework. It encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design. Django's primary goal is to ease the creation of complex, database-driven websites.

Django is maintained by the Django Software Foundation.

Django FileResponse

FileResponse is a subclass of StreamingHttpResponse optimized for binary files. The file is automatically close. 

from django.http import FileResponse

response = FileResponse(open('myfile.png', 'rb'))

FileResponse accepts any file-like object with binary content.

Django FileResponse example

In the following example, we create a Django application that sends a file to the client. The file is a JPEG image, which is located in the images directory in the project root directory. 

$ mkdir fileresponse 
$ cd fileresponse
$ mkdir src images
$ cd src

We create the project and the images and src subdirectories. Then we locate to the src directory. 

$ django-admin startproject fileresponse .

We create a new Django project in the src directory.

Note: If the optional destination is provided, Django will use that existing directory as the project directory. If it is omitted, Django creates a new directory based on the project name. We use the dot (.) to create a project inside the current working directory. 

$ django-admin startapp sendfile

We create a new app. The sendfile application contains the functionality to send the image to the client. 

$ cd ..
$ pwd
/c/Users/Jano/Documents/pyprogs/django/fileresponse

We show the current working diretory. 

$ tree /f
src
│   db.sqlite3
│   manage.py
│
├───fileresponse
│       settings.py
│       urls.py
│       wsgi.py
│       __init__.py
│
├───images
│       bojnice.jpg
│
└───sendfile
    │   admin.py
    │   apps.py
    │   models.py
    │   tests.py
    │   views.py
    │   __init__.py
    │
    └───migrations
            __init__.py

These are the contents of the project directory.

src/fileresponse/settings.py 
...
INSTALLED_APPS = [
    'django.contrib.admin',
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',
    'sendfile',
] 
...

Inside the setting.py file, we add the sendfile component to installed apps.

src/fileresponse/urls.py 
from django.contrib import admin
from django.urls import path
from sendfile.views import send_file

urlpatterns = [
    path('admin/', admin.site.urls),
    path('', send_file, name='send_file'),
]

We add a new route for the root page; it calls the send_file function from the sendfile component.

src/sendfile/views.py 
from django.http import FileResponse

def send_file(response):

    img = open('images/bojnice.jpg', 'rb')

    response = FileResponse(img)

    return response

Inside send_file, we read the image and return it to the client in FileResponse object. 

$ python manage.py runserver

We run the server and navigate to http://127.0.0.1:8000/. We should see the image in the browser.

In this article, we have demonstrated how to send a file with Django.