Raja Simon

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Django download file on button click

Published 11 Jan, 2023

Reading time: 1 Mins


To properly download a file on Django response you need to have Content-Disposition response

To offer a download image or file in your website you need to return a correct Django response. That response must contains the header Content-Disposition with the value of attachment

Step 1: Prepare the HttpResponse

First thing first is to open the file in the binary mode and include it in the http response. Also use appropriate MIME for the content_type.

with open(file_path, "rb") as fprb:
    response = HttpResponse(fprb.read(), content_type="image/png")

Step 2: Attach the Content-Disposition header

This header is responsible for what the browser should do with the response. Whether display it in the browser itself ( default value inline ) or attachment where consider the whole attachment as the download.

response["Content-Disposition"] = "attachment; filename=preview-card.png"

Here the filename is optional but if you provide the browser will use that name to save your file.

Step: 3: Return the response

Finally you can return the response and when user clicks the download button in Django it will return the response as the download file instead of showing it in the browse.

with open(file_path, "rb") as fprb:
     response = HttpResponse(fprb.read(), content_type="image/png")
     response["Content-Disposition"] = "attachment; filename=preview-card.png"
     return response

Conclusion

If you don’t want to modify the response you can also return a FileResponse which have the option as above.

return FileResponse(fprb.read(), as_attachment=True, filename="preview-card.png")

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