rsvg doesn't render linked images

Question

I use the python rsvg bindings to render an svg image into cairo and save to file, which mostly works. But if the svg file contains a linked image, like so:

Answer 1

There are many factors which must be satisfied for LibRsvg to allow an image resource to be loaded. As of v2.40 these include:

• the image must have an xlink:href attribute
• that attribute must contain a full, valid URI
• the scheme can be data:// or file://
• file:// paths must be absolute
• file:// paths must be in or below the path of the SVG source file (after any symlinks have been dereferenced)

Note that if input is passed to rsvg-convert via stdin, then no paths count as subdirectories of the input file and all file:// images will be denied.

rsvg-convert < input.svg > output.png  # images denied

rsvg-convert -o output.png input.svg  # images allowed

The code governing image URL resolution can be found in the LibRsvg source in rsvg-base.c, function _rsvg_handle_allow_load.

To add a debugging notification to rsvg-convert when image loading fails, one can append

#define G_ENABLE_DEBUG

to config.h in the source and recompile.