Programmatically saving image to Django ImageField

A lot of these answers were outdated, and I spent many hours in frustration (I'm fairly new to Django & web dev in general). However, I found this excellent gist by @iambibhas: https://gist.github.com/iambibhas/5051911

import requests

from django.core.files import File
from django.core.files.temp import NamedTemporaryFile


def save_image_from_url(model, url):
    r = requests.get(url)

    img_temp = NamedTemporaryFile(delete=True)
    img_temp.write(r.content)
    img_temp.flush()

    model.image.save("image.jpg", File(img_temp), save=True)

With Django 3, with a model such as this one:

class Item(models.Model):
   name = models.CharField(max_length=255, unique=True)
   photo= models.ImageField(upload_to='image_folder/', blank=True)

if the image has already been uploaded, we can directly do :

Item.objects.filter(...).update(photo='image_folder/sample_photo.png')

or

my_item = Item.objects.get(id=5)
my_item.photo='image_folder/sample_photo.png'
my_item.save()

Working! You can save image by using FileSystemStorage. check the example below

def upload_pic(request):
if request.method == 'POST' and request.FILES['photo']:
    photo = request.FILES['photo']
    name = request.FILES['photo'].name
    fs = FileSystemStorage()
##### you can update file saving location too by adding line below #####
    fs.base_location = fs.base_location+'/company_coverphotos'
##################
    filename = fs.save(name, photo)
    uploaded_file_url = fs.url(filename)+'/company_coverphotos'
    Profile.objects.filter(user=request.user).update(photo=photo)

Your can use Django REST framework and python Requests library to Programmatically saving image to Django ImageField

Here is a Example:

import requests


def upload_image():
    # PATH TO DJANGO REST API
    url = "http://127.0.0.1:8080/api/gallery/"

    # MODEL FIELDS DATA
    data = {'first_name': "Rajiv", 'last_name': "Sharma"}

    #  UPLOAD FILES THROUGH REST API
    photo = open('/path/to/photo', 'rb')
    resume = open('/path/to/resume', 'rb')
    files = {'photo': photo, 'resume': resume}

    request = requests.post(url, data=data, files=files)
    print(request.status_code, request.reason) 

class DemoImage(models.Model):
    title = models.TextField(max_length=255, blank=False)
    image = models.ImageField(blank=False, upload_to="images/DemoImages/")

import requests
import urllib.request
from django.core.files import File
url = "https://path/to/logo.jpg"

# Below 3 lines is to fake as browser agent 
# as many sites block urllib class suspecting to be bots
opener = urllib.request.build_opener()
opener.addheaders = [("User-agent", "Mozilla/5.0")]
urllib.request.install_opener(opener)

# Issue command to actually download and create temp img file in memory        
result = urllib.request.urlretrieve(url)

# DemoImage.objects.create(title="title", image=File(open(result[0], "rb"))) 
# ^^ This erroneously results in creating the file like 
# images/DemoImages/path/to/temp/dir/logo_image_file 
# as opposed to 
# images/DemoImages/logo_image_file

# Solution to get the file in images/DemoImages/
reopen = open(result[0], "rb") # Returns a BufferedReader object of the temp image
django_file = File(reopen)     # Create the file from the BufferedReader object 
demoimg = DemoImage()
demoimg.title = "title"
demoimg.image.save("logo.png", django_file, save=True)

This approach also triggers file upload to cloudinary/S3 if so configured

So, if you have a model with an imagefield with an upload_to attribute set, such as:

class Avatar(models.Model):
    image_file = models.ImageField(upload_to=user_directory_path_avatar)

then it is reasonably easy to change the image, at least in django 3.15.

In the view, when you process the image, you can obtain the image from:

self.request.FILES['avatar']

which is an instance of type InMemoryUploadedFile, as long as your html form has the enctype set and a field for avatar...

    <form method="post" class="avatarform" id="avatarform" action="{% url avatar_update_view' %}" enctype="multipart/form-data">
         {% csrf_token %}
         <input id="avatarUpload" class="d-none" type="file" name="avatar">
    </form>

Then, setting the new image in the view is as easy as the following (where profile is the profile model for the self.request.user)

profile.avatar.image_file.save(self.request.FILES['avatar'].name, self.request.FILES['avatar'])

There is no need to save the profile.avatar, the image_field already saves, and into the correct location because of the 'upload_to' callback function.

I save the image with uuid in django 2 python 3 because thats how django do it:

import uuid   
from django.core.files import File 
import urllib

httpUrl = "https://miimgeurl/image.jpg"
result = urllib.request.urlretrieve(httpUrl)            
mymodel.imagefield.save(os.path.basename(str(uuid.uuid4())+".jpg"),File(open(result[0], 'rb')))
mymodel.save()

if you use admin.py you can solve the problem override (doc on django):

def save_model(self, request, obj, form, change):
    obj.image_data = bytes(obj.image_name.read())
    super().save_model(request, obj, form, change)

with models.py:

image_name = models.ImageField()
image_data = models.BinaryField()