How do I use django rest framework to send a file in response?

Question

I need to send a pdf file and some other parameters in response to a get API call using django rest framework.

How can I do it? I tried this but it gives an error

Answer 1

If you really need to serve binary files directly from your backend (e.g. when they're being generated dynamically) you can use a custom renderer:

from rest_framework.renderers import BaseRenderer

class BinaryFileRenderer(BaseRenderer):
    media_type = 'application/octet-stream'
    format = None
    charset = None
    render_style = 'binary'

    def render(self, data, media_type=None, renderer_context=None):
        return data

Then use it in your action in a viewset:

@detail_route(methods=['get'], renderer_classes=(BinaryFileRenderer,))
def download(self, request, *args, **kwargs):
    with open('/path/to/file.pdf', 'rb') as report:
        return Response(
            report.read(),
            headers={'Content-Disposition': 'attachment; filename="file.pdf"'},
            content_type='application/pdf')