Python variables and files

Question

Is there any way I can make so that I can treat a file as a variable? As an example when the function save from PIL Image module is called: Image.save("foo.jpg") i would like all the data not to save on the hard disk but to be introduced in a variable a so that when a.read() is called, it should return what the content of the file would be.

Andrew Barrett · Accepted Answer · 2012-04-28 19:32:24Z

8

You can use the BytesIO class to save a PIL Image to a byte stream.

>>> from PIL import Image
>>> im = Image.open('ball.png')
>>> from io import BytesIO
>>> buffer = BytesIO()
>>> im.save(buffer, format='png')
>>> buffer.getvalue()
'\x89PNG\r\n\x1a\n\x00\ ...

It's probably worth reading through the whole io module page, it's pretty short, lots of good info, contains StringIO as ch3ka pointed out.

edited Apr 28, 2012 at 19:32

answered Apr 28, 2012 at 19:18

Andrew Barrett

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2 Comments

Serban Razvan Over a year ago

Thanks for the answer, it worked, but one more question, what is the purpose of 'im.write'?

Andrew Barrett Over a year ago

That was me forgetting the proper Image class method to save for a bit, I've just removed :)

ch3ka · Accepted Answer · 2012-04-28 19:17:47Z

7

sure, take a look in the StringIO module. It provides a file-like interface for strings.

http://docs.python.org/library/stringio.html

StringIO - File-like objects that read from or write to a string buffer.

answered Apr 28, 2012 at 19:17

ch3ka

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