What's the correct way to get a pdf attachment from a GET request in django

I have this simple view:

class Reports(generics.GenericAPIView):
    permission_classes = (permissions.AllowAny,)

    def get(self, request, *args, **kwargs):
        report_id = request.GET.get("report_id")
        response = get_report(report_id)
        return Response(response, status=status.HTTP_200_OK)

The get_report method simply strips the payload and returns just an id that needs to be sent to GET the pdf.

Error that is returned:

ERROR 2022-04-20 19:02:58,537 log 148558 140052495332928 Internal Server Error: /api/v2/app/reports
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/osboxes/ndoh-hub/venv/lib/python3.6/site-packages/django/core/handlers/exception.py", line 34, in inner
    response = get_response(request)
  File "/home/osboxes/ndoh-hub/venv/lib/python3.6/site-packages/django/core/handlers/base.py", line 145, in _get_response
    response = self.process_exception_by_middleware(e, request)
  File "/home/osboxes/ndoh-hub/venv/lib/python3.6/site-packages/django/core/handlers/base.py", line 143, in _get_response
    response = response.render()
  File "/home/osboxes/ndoh-hub/venv/lib/python3.6/site-packages/django/template/response.py", line 106, in render
    self.content = self.rendered_content
  File "/home/osboxes/ndoh-hub/venv/lib/python3.6/site-packages/rest_framework/response.py", line 70, in rendered_content
    ret = renderer.render(self.data, accepted_media_type, context)
  File "/home/osboxes/ndoh-hub/venv/lib/python3.6/site-packages/rest_framework/renderers.py", line 103, in render
    allow_nan=not self.strict, separators=separators
  File "/home/osboxes/ndoh-hub/venv/lib/python3.6/site-packages/rest_framework/utils/json.py", line 25, in dumps
    return json.dumps(*args, **kwargs)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/json/__init__.py", line 238, in dumps
    **kw).encode(obj)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/json/encoder.py", line 199, in encode
    chunks = self.iterencode(o, _one_shot=True)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/json/encoder.py", line 257, in iterencode
    return _iterencode(o, 0)
  File "/home/osboxes/ndoh-hub/venv/lib/python3.6/site-packages/rest_framework/utils/encoders.py", line 50, in default
    return obj.decode()
UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0x81 in position 10: invalid start byte

The server response headers:

 access-control-allow-origin: * 
 access-control-expose-headers: content-disposition 
 content-disposition: attachment; filename="assessment_hbx0MkrjYad2I2suaKcrIdzOcaMlIBSGDw4I8TBprWC28GbDFkF0KxuBpNMB1qYc.pdf" 
 content-length: 48818 
 content-type: application/octet-stream 
 date: Wed,20 Apr 2022 19:16:34 GMT 
 server: istio-envoy 
 x-envoy-upstream-service-time: 2099 
 x-powered-by: Express

Filename is unique for each download so it changes all the time in the servers response.

Thanks for the suggestion.

Use httprespons: for example

return HttpResponse(pdf_data, content_type="application/pdf")
Back to Top