Serve a file for download with Django

Question

I am trying to serve a download file in my django app, after a bit of research I made the code below but there is one problem, the file is opened in the browser instead of being downloaded.

The files that I serve on my app are exe, and when they open it's just a bunch of random characters.

So how can I specify that I want the file to be downloaded, not opened? Thank you

with open(path_to_apk, 'rb') as fh:
     response = HttpResponse(fh)
     response['Content-Disposition'] = 'inline; filename=' + os.path.basename(path_to_apk)
     return response`

Possible duplicate of [Generating file to download with Django](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/908258/generating-file-to-download-with-django) — Dhia, May 10 '17 at 12:47

bruno desthuilliers · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-10T12:32:33.973

2

You want to set the Content-disposition header to "attachment" (and set the proper content-type too - from the var names I assume those files are android packages, else replace with the proper content type):

response = HttpResponse(fh, content_type="application/vnd.android.package-archive") 
response["Content-disposition"] = "attachment; filename={}".format(os.path.basename(path_to_apk))
return response

edited May 10 '17 at 12:32

answered May 10 '17 at 12:04

bruno desthuilliers

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Thanks this seems to be working, there is a misspelling on the code: instead of format you wrote fomat, maybe you can correct it for others who might want to use your solution. – Abderrahman Gourragui May 10 '17 at 12:15

Prateek Gupta · Answer 2 · 2021-08-23T23:15:11.180

0

First of all you have to set the Content_Disposition header to attachment.

And instead of worrying about correct value for Content_Type header, use FileResponse instead of HttpResponse:

file=open(path_to_apk,"rb")
response=FileResponse(file)
response['Content-Disposition'] = 'attachment; filename={}'.format(os.path.basename(path_to_apk))
return response

edited Aug 23 '21 at 23:15

answered Aug 23 '21 at 23:09

Prateek Gupta

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered May 20 '23 at 12:42

You can use a FileResponse with as_attachment=True for this. It will handle stuff like reading the file into memory, setting the correct Content-Type, Content-Disposition, etc. automatically for you.

from django.http import FileResponse

def download_file(request):
    return FileResponse(open(path_to_apk, 'rb'), as_attachment=True)

Serve a file for download with Django

3 Answers3