python - Downloading Image Data URIs from Webpages via BeautifulSoup

Question

I need to retrieve an image from a website using Python. However, the image is not in the form of a linked file, but as a GIF Data URI. How do I download this and store it in a .gif file?

Answer 1

This should get you going in the correct direction.

First, I'll assume you have retrieved the image uri data and it is saved in a python variable called img_data:

# Example
img_data = 'data:image/jpeg;base64,/9j/4A...<lots of data>...k='

Now you'll need to decode the picture from base64 and save it to a file:

import base64

# Separate the metadata from the image data
head, data = img_data.split(',', 1)

# Get the file extension (gif, jpeg, png)
file_ext = head.split(';')[0].split('/')[1]

# Decode the image data
plain_data = base64.b64decode(data)

# Write the image to a file
with open('image.' + file_ext, 'wb') as f:
    f.write(plain_data)