While implementing a rest API in python flask, I have used several options to return a file (any type) , read it and save it to local repository of request but encountered with multiple errors as below:
Case 1:
def download_file():
return send_file('any_file.pdf')
r = requests.get(url = 'http://localhost:5000/download').read()
has responded with a error Response object has no attribute read/text/content
Case 2:
def download_file():
file = open('any_file.pdf','r').read()
return file
r = requests.get(url = 'http://localhost:5000/download')
has responded with a error Return doesn't accept this
So How can I do this as flask is not allowing to return a file without response object and response object is not readable and doesn't support to save that file directly.
The Flask server code in Case 1 is correct. A more complete example:
@app.route('/download')
def download_file():
# Some logic here
send_file('any_file.pdf')
However the Response object returned by requests.get doesn't have a read method. The correct way is to use:
Response.content: Content of the response, in bytes.
So, the client code should be:
r = requests.get('http://localhost:5000/download')
bytes = r.content
# Now do something with bytes, for example save it:
with open('downloaded_file.ext', 'wb') as f:
f.write(bytes)