Reading and Writing to PDFs stored in Django Models.py

Question

Can I store PDFs in Django Models.py under ImageField? Documentation doesn't seem to mention PDFs much. I'm thinking of trying something along the lines of:

from django.db import models

class Model(models.Model):
    text = models.CharField(max_length=30, unique=False)
    pdf = models.ImageField(upload_to='media/pdfs')

with a form.py structured like this:

from django import forms
from model.models import Model

class textForm(forms.ModelForm):
    class Meta:
        model = Model
        fields = ('text',)

With a Views.py structured like this:

def user_view(request):
    text = form.cleaned_data.get('text')
    can.drawString(10, 100, Model.text)

    existing_pdf = PdfFileReader(open("media/01.pdf", "rb"))
    page = existing_pdf.getPage(0)
    page.mergePage(new_pdf.getPage(0))
    PdfFileWriter().addPage(page)

    return render(request, "app/fill_form.html", context)

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 12 '20 at 23:06

Try the models.FileField https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.0/topics/http/file-uploads/

Here is a snippet from the docs

from django.http import HttpResponseRedirect
from django.shortcuts import render
from .forms import ModelFormWithFileField

def upload_file(request):
    if request.method == 'POST':
        form = ModelFormWithFileField(request.POST, request.FILES)
        if form.is_valid():
            # file is saved
            form.save()
            return HttpResponseRedirect('/success/url/')
    else:
        form = ModelFormWithFileField()
    return render(request, 'upload.html', {'form': form})

If you need to access uploaded files from the view, they will be in

requests.FILES

To return a pdf as a view you can follow this post How to show a PDF file in a Django view?

def pdf_view(request):
    with open('/path/to/my/file.pdf', 'r') as pdf:
        response = HttpResponse(pdf.read(), mimetype='application/pdf')
        response['Content-Disposition'] = 'inline;filename=some_file.pdf'
        return response
    pdf.closed

If you have pdf in your models you could just add a editPDF function on your model that can add the selected text the way you're doing (assuming that is working) and save the pdf.

Thank you for the speed of your answer, it took me a while to fully get through the material you shared. I am curious, could you elaborate further on the editPDF function in the model that you mentioned at the end? I have never seen an example of something like that. — Display name, Apr 13 '20 at 00:46

Reading and Writing to PDFs stored in Django Models.py

1 Answers1