Get Binary Image Data From a MatPlotLib Canvas?

Question

I\'m trying to get the binary data from a matplotlib canvas so I can attach it to an email, but the only way I\'ve found to do so is by saying:

filename = \'         


        

Answer 1

Use a StringIO object as a file object, which can be given to the print_png canvas function.

from cStringIO import StringIO
sio = StringIO()
canvas.print_png(sio)
return sio.getvalue()

(if you're using Python 3, use io.BytesIO instead of cStringIO)