Serve a dynamically generated image with Django

ajax, django, image, python

Solution

I assume you're using PIL (Python Imaging Library). You need to replace your last line with (for example, if you want to serve a PNG image):

response = HttpResponse(mimetype="image/png")
img.save(response, "PNG")
return response

See here for more information.

Problem

How do I serve a dynamically generated image in Django? I have an html tag ``` <html> ... <img src="images/dynamic_chart.png" /> ... </html> ``` linked up to this request handler, which creates an in-memory image ``` def chart(request): img = Image.new("RGB", (300,300), "#FFFFFF") data = [(i,randint(100,200)) for i in range(0,300,10)] draw = ImageDraw.Draw(img) draw.polygon(data, fill="#000000") # now what? return HttpResponse(output) ``` I also plan to change the requests to AJAX, and add some sort of caching mechanism, but my understanding is that wouldn't affect this part of the solution.

Original source