Saving image to variable using PyQGIS

Question

I'm generating an image from QgsComposer composition through QgsLayoutExporter.exportToImage() method that allows saving the image to disk.

I wonder if there is any way to get image binary data into a variable?

I need to send this image later to a server to process, so I don't need a physical file at all. One way would be saving the file in /tmp and then deleting, but it requires unnecessary interaction with HDD and looks ugly.

I tried to find another solution using eg. generating an image from mapCanvas, but similarly, they provide only saving data to a file.

I'm using QGIS API ( 3.3.0-Master)

Answer 1

There's QgsLayoutExporter.renderPageToImage. This returns a QImsge object. Depending on your requirements, the QImage API can be used to transform the image into the required format.

Answer 2

To generate buffer object with image, I ended up with a snippet like this on QGIS side:

# Open pre-prepared QGIS .qpt Composer file which consists of map image only
composition_path = 'path to qpt file'
with open(composition_path, 'rt') as f:
    content = f.read()

doc = QDomDocument()
doc.setContent(content)
c = QgsLayout(QgsProject().instance())
c.loadFromTemplate(doc, QgsReadWriteContext())

# Get the map item from Composer and set it's extent
map_item = getLayoutItemById(c, 'map', QgsLayoutItemMap)
map_item.zoomToExtent(memory.extent())
map_item.refresh()

# Export PNG to a buffer of QBuffer type
exporter = QgsLayoutExporter(c)
buffer = QBuffer()
buffer.open(QIODevice.ReadWrite)        
image = exporter.renderPageToImage(0)
image.save(buffer, 'PNG')
buffer.seek(0)

# Send payload like this to the server
payload = {
    ...,
    'map_image':base64.encodebytes(buffer.data()).decode('utf-8'),
    ...
}

This was not included in question, but if anyone wonders what can you do with the object, on the server side I would load it into PIL image like this:

image_data = payload.get('map_image')
map_image = BytesIO()
PilImage.open( 
    BytesIO(image_data.decode('base64_codec')) 
).save(map_image, format='PNG')
map_image.seek(0)
# now do whatever with the PIL object, like create a PDF where map is an element