dataURI

Convert any kind of data (images, files, etc.) to a data-URI/URL.

What is a data-URI?

If you ever were in need of a data-URI you know that it is a bit annoying to create. Mostly people resort to using internet services/websites for this. But you can locally do this easily if you have Python.

<a href="data:text/html;charset=utf-8;base64,YWxlcnQoJ0hlbGxvIFdvcmxkIScpOw==">Click me</a>

Example Data-URI: Click me

Why and when do I use it?

If you want an HTML document to be delivered in one go, you can encode all additional content which usually refers to a file as a data-URI instead and embed this content directly into the HTML document.

Advantages:

• only one HTTP-request is necessary to deliver the document
• document is complete, no other files need to be requested or delivered
• delivery is faster because the webserver only needs one request and response
• very helpful for low power webservers like on microcontrollers

Installation

Create a virtual environment and activate it, then install the python-datauri module.

python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install python-datauri

Usage

python data_uri_from_file.py -h

Convert to HTML

To convert a file into a URI that you can preview and see in a custom html file just call following.

python data_uri_from_file.py -i data_uri_from_file.py -o my_data_uri.html

Convert to data directly

To convert and directly copy to the pasteboard (on macOS) just call the following using pbcopy tool.

python data_uri_from_file.py -i data_uri_from_file.py -q | pbcopy