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.

 ... 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.

 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.

 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.