XlsxWriter object save as http response to create download in Django

Question

XlsxWriter object save as http response to create download in Django?

Answer 1

A little update on @alecxe response for Python 3 (io.BytesIO instead of StringIO.StringIO) and Django >= 1.5 (content_type instead of mimetype), with the fully in-memory file assembly that has since been implemented by @jmcnamara ({'in_memory': True}) !
Here is the full example :

import io

from django.http.response import HttpResponse

from xlsxwriter.workbook import Workbook


def your_view(request):

    output = io.BytesIO()

    workbook = Workbook(output, {'in_memory': True})
    worksheet = workbook.add_worksheet()
    worksheet.write(0, 0, 'Hello, world!')
    workbook.close()

    output.seek(0)

    response = HttpResponse(output.read(), content_type="application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet")
    response['Content-Disposition'] = "attachment; filename=test.xlsx"

    output.close()

    return response

Answer 2

When it comes to Django, you can even do without the whole StringIO shenanigans. HttpResponse behaves just like a StringIO in that respect:

from django.http import HttpResponse
from xlsxwriter.workbook import Workbook

def your_view(request):
    # your view logic here

    # create the HttpResponse object ...
    response = HttpResponse(content_type='application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet')
    response['Content-Disposition'] = "attachment; filename=test.xlsx"

    # .. and pass it into the XLSXWriter
    book = Workbook(response, {'in_memory': True})
    sheet = book.add_worksheet('test')       
    sheet.write(0, 0, 'Hello, world!')
    book.close()

    return response

Addendum: You need to specify {'in_memory': True} or you might get HttpResponse has no attribute seek(). Thanks @Jeb

Answer 3

I think you're asking about how to create an excel file in memory using xlsxwriter and return it via HttpResponse. Here's an example:

try:
    import cStringIO as StringIO
except ImportError:
    import StringIO

from django.http import HttpResponse

from xlsxwriter.workbook import Workbook


def your_view(request):
    # your view logic here

    # create a workbook in memory
    output = StringIO.StringIO()

    book = Workbook(output)
    sheet = book.add_worksheet('test')       
    sheet.write(0, 0, 'Hello, world!')
    book.close()

    # construct response
    output.seek(0)
    response = HttpResponse(output.read(), mimetype="application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet")
    response['Content-Disposition'] = "attachment; filename=test.xlsx"

    return response

Hope that helps.