XlsxWriter object save as http response to create download in Django

A little update on @alecxe response for Python 3 (io.BytesIO instead of StringIO.StringIO) and Django >= 1.5 (content_type instead of mimetype), with the fully in-memory file assembly that has since been implemented by @jmcnamara ({'in_memory': True}) !
Here is the full example :

import iofrom django.http.response import HttpResponsefrom xlsxwriter.workbook import Workbookdef your_view(request):    output = io.BytesIO()    workbook = Workbook(output, {'in_memory': True})    worksheet = workbook.add_worksheet()    worksheet.write(0, 0, 'Hello, world!')    workbook.close()    output.seek(0)    response = HttpResponse(output.read(), content_type="application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet")    response['Content-Disposition'] = "attachment; filename=test.xlsx"    output.close()    return response

I think you're asking about how to create an excel file in memory using xlsxwriter and return it via HttpResponse. Here's an example:

try:    import cStringIO as StringIOexcept ImportError:    import StringIOfrom django.http import HttpResponsefrom xlsxwriter.workbook import Workbookdef your_view(request):    # your view logic here    # create a workbook in memory    output = StringIO.StringIO()    book = Workbook(output)    sheet = book.add_worksheet('test')           sheet.write(0, 0, 'Hello, world!')    book.close()    # construct response    output.seek(0)    response = HttpResponse(output.read(), mimetype="application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet")    response['Content-Disposition'] = "attachment; filename=test.xlsx"    return response

Hope that helps.

When it comes to Django, you can even do without the whole StringIO shenanigans. HttpResponse behaves just like a StringIO in that respect:

from django.http import HttpResponsefrom xlsxwriter.workbook import Workbookdef your_view(request):    # your view logic here    # create the HttpResponse object ...    response = HttpResponse(content_type='application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet')    response['Content-Disposition'] = "attachment; filename=test.xlsx"    # .. and pass it into the XLSXWriter    book = Workbook(response, {'in_memory': True})    sheet = book.add_worksheet('test')           sheet.write(0, 0, 'Hello, world!')    book.close()    return response

Addendum: You need to specify {'in_memory': True} or you might get HttpResponse has no attribute seek(). Thanks @Jeb