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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-27T21:31:06+00:00

I have the following code for managing file download through django. def serve_file(request, id):

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I have the following code for managing file download through django. 

def serve_file(request, id):

    file = models.X.objects.get(id=id).file #FileField
    file.open('rb')
    wrapper = FileWrapper(file)
    mt = mimetypes.guess_type(file.name)[0]
    response = HttpResponse(wrapper, content_type=mt)

    import unicodedata, os.path
    filename = unicodedata.normalize('NFKD', os.path.basename(file.name)).encode("utf8",'ignore')
    filename = filename.replace(' ', '-') #Avoid browser to ignore any char after the space

    response['Content-Length'] = file.size
    response['Content-Disposition'] = 'attachment; filename={0}'.format(filename)

    #print response
    return response

Unfortunately, my browser get an empty file when downloading.

The printed response seems correct:

Content-Length: 3906
Content-Type: text/plain
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=toto.txt

blah blah ....

I have similar code running ok. I don’t see what can be the problem. Any idea?

PS: I have tested the solution proposed here and get the same behavior

Update:
Replacing wrapper = FileWrapper(file) by wrapper = file.read() seems to fix the problem

Update: If I comment the print response, I get similar issue:. the file is empty. Only difference: FF detects a 20bytes size. (the file is bigger than this)

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    File object is an interable, and a generator. It can be read only once before being exausted. Then you have to make a new one, of use a method to start at the begining of the object again (e.g: seek()).

    read() returns a string, which can be read multiple times without any problem, this is why it solves your issue.

    So just make sure that if you use a file like object, you don’t read it twice in a row. E.G: don’t print it, then returns it.

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