Django2: Submit and store blobs as image files - django

Question

I have made a few Django projects after having read the tutorial but I am by no means an expert in Django.
I am trying to take a screenshot of the current page and store it (if one does not exist).
To achieve this, we require a few things:
function to get screen shot of current page
function to async post this image to a view which should store it
view that stores the posted image
However, the screen shot function results in a Blob and I am having trouble getting a Django view to properly handle this.
A demo project is available here: https://gitlab.com/SumNeuron/so_save_blob
Function for screenshot
const screenshot = (function() {
function urlsToAbsolute(nodeList) {
if (!nodeList.length) {
return [];
}
var attrName = 'href';
if (nodeList[0].__proto__ === HTMLImageElement.prototype
|| nodeList[0].__proto__ === HTMLScriptElement.prototype) {
attrName = 'src';
}
nodeList = [].map.call(nodeList, function (el, i) {
var attr = el.getAttribute(attrName);
if (!attr) {
return;
}
var absURL = /^(https?|data):/i.test(attr);
if (absURL) {
return el;
} else {
return el;
}
});
return nodeList;
}
function addOnPageLoad_() {
window.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', function (e) {
var scrollX = document.documentElement.dataset.scrollX || 0;
var scrollY = document.documentElement.dataset.scrollY || 0;
window.scrollTo(scrollX, scrollY);
});
}
function capturePage(){
urlsToAbsolute(document.images);
urlsToAbsolute(document.querySelectorAll("link[rel='stylesheet']"));
var screenshot = document.documentElement.cloneNode(true);
var b = document.createElement('base');
b.href = document.location.protocol + '//' + location.host;
var head = screenshot.querySelector('head');
head.insertBefore(b, head.firstChild);
screenshot.style.pointerEvents = 'none';
screenshot.style.overflow = 'hidden';
screenshot.style.webkitUserSelect = 'none';
screenshot.style.mozUserSelect = 'none';
screenshot.style.msUserSelect = 'none';
screenshot.style.oUserSelect = 'none';
screenshot.style.userSelect = 'none';
screenshot.dataset.scrollX = window.scrollX;
screenshot.dataset.scrollY = window.scrollY;
var script = document.createElement('script');
script.textContent = '(' + addOnPageLoad_.toString() + ')();';
screenshot.querySelector('body').appendChild(script);
var blob = new Blob([screenshot.outerHTML], {
type: 'text/html'
});
return blob;
}
return capturePage
})()
Function to async post Blob
function setupAjaxWithCSRFToken() {
// using jQuery
var csrftoken = jQuery("[name=csrfmiddlewaretoken]").val();
function csrfSafeMethod(method) {
// these HTTP methods do not require CSRF protection
return (/^(GET|HEAD|OPTIONS|TRACE)$/.test(method));
}
// set csrf header
$.ajaxSetup({
beforeSend: function(xhr, settings) {
if (!csrfSafeMethod(settings.type) && !this.crossDomain) {
xhr.setRequestHeader("X-CSRFToken", csrftoken);
}
}
});
}
function asyncSubmitBlob( url, blob ) {
var fd = new FormData();
fd.append('image', blob);
$.ajax({
url: url,
type: "POST",
data: fd,
contentType: false,
processData: false,
success: function(response){ console.log(response) },
error: function(data){ console.log(data) }
})
}
So to submit a screenshot of the current page:
setupAjaxWithCSRFToken()
const page = window.location.pathname;
const blob_url = "{% url 'my-app:post_blob' 'REPLACE' %}".replace(/REPLACE/,page == '/' ? '' : page)
asyncSubmitBlob( blob_url, screenshot() )
View to store the posted blob image
urls.py
...
from django.urls import include, path
...
app_name='my-app'
url_patterns=[
...
path('post_blob/', views.post_blob, {'page':'/'},name='post_blob'),
path('post_blob/<page>', views.post_blob,name='post_blob'),
...
]
views.py
from .models import PageBlob
...
def post_blob(request, page):
if request.FILES: # save screenshot of specified page
try:
pb = PageBlob.objects.all().filter(page=page))
if not pb.count():
pb = PageBlob()
pb.page = page
pb.blob = request.FILES['image']
pb.save()
return HttpResponse('Blob Submitted')
except:
return HttpResponse('[App::my-app]\tError when requesting page_image({page})'.format(page=page))
else: # return screenshot of requested page
try:
# get objects storing screenshot for requested page
pb = PageBlob.objects.all().filter(page=page)
# if one exists
if pb.count():
pb = pb[0]
## this just returns the string literal "blob"
return HttpResponse(str(pb.blob))
return HttpResponse('[App::my-app]\tNo blob for {page}'.format(page=page))
except:
return HttpResponse('[App::my-app]\tError when trying to retrieve blob for {page}'.format(page=page))
return HttpResponse('Another response')
models.py
class PageBlob(models.Model):
page = models.CharField(max_length=500)
blob = models.TextField(db_column='data', blank=True)
But I can not seem to faithfully capture and retrieve the blob.
Many S.O. questions of storing blobs use the model approach with import base64 to encode and decode the blob. One even recommends using the BinaryField. However, Django's documentation states firmly that BinaryField is not a replacement for the handling of static files.
So how could I achieve this?
S.O. posts I have found helpful to get this far
Upload an image blob from Ajax to Django
How to screenshot website in JavaScript client-side / how Google did it? (no need to access HDD)
How to download data in a blob field from database in django?
passing blob parameter to django
Returning binary data with django HttpResponse
https://djangosnippets.org/snippets/1597/
Django Binary or BLOB model field
Django CSRF check failing with an Ajax POST request
How can javascript upload a blob?