Go download image

last modified April 11, 2024

In this article we show how to download an image file in Go.

To download an image, we use the net/http and req packages.

The net/http package provides HTTP client and server implementations and is used to create GET and POST requests. The req is a third-party HTTP client with many convenience functions.

Go download image example

In the next example, we use the net/http package to download an image file.

main.go

package main

import ( “fmt” “io” “log” “net/http” “os” )

func main() {

fname := "favicon.ico"

f, err := os.Create(fname)

if err != nil {
    log.Fatal(err)
}

defer f.Close()

url := "http://webcode.me/favicon.ico"
res, err := http.Get(url)

if err != nil {
    log.Fatal(err)
}

defer res.Body.Close()

_, err = io.Copy(f, res.Body)

if err != nil {
    log.Fatal(err)
}

fmt.Println("image downloaded")

}

We download a favicon.

f, err := os.Create(fname)

With os.Create, we create a file where we write the binary data.

url := “http://webcode.me/favicon.ico" res, err := http.Get(url)

To fetch the image, we generate a GET request with http.Get.

_, err = io.Copy(f, res.Body)

We copy the downloaded data into the file from the body of the response using the io.Copy function.

The following is a slightly modified version of the example.

main.go

package main

import ( “fmt” “log” “net/http” “os” “path” )

func main() {

url := "http://webcode.me/favicon.ico"

r, err := http.Get(url)

if err != nil {
    log.Fatal(err)
}

defer r.Body.Close()

fname := path.Base(url)
f, err := os.Create(fname)

if err != nil {
    log.Fatal(err)
}

defer f.Close()

_, err = f.ReadFrom(r.Body)

if err != nil {
    log.Fatal(err)
}

fmt.Println("image downloaded")

}

We use the ReadFrom function to write the downloaded data into the newly created file.

Go download image with Req

The next example uses the Req package to download an image.

maing.go

package main

import ( “log”

"github.com/imroc/req/v3"

)

func main() {

client := req.C()

url := "http://webcode.me/favicon.ico"

_, err := client.R().SetOutputFile("favicon.ico").Get(url)

if err != nil {
    log.Fatal(err)
}

}

Using the Req package, our code becomes shorter.

Download image from a custom server

In the next example, we create a simple web server which sends an image as a stream of bytes and a client that downloads that image.

main.go

package main

import ( “fmt” “io/ioutil” “log” “net/http” )

func main() {

handler := http.HandlerFunc(handleRequest)

http.Handle("/image", handler)

fmt.Println("Server started at port 8080")
http.ListenAndServe(":8080", nil)

}

func handleRequest(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {

buf, err := ioutil.ReadFile("sid.png")

if err != nil {

    log.Fatal(err)
}

w.Header().Set("Content-Type", "image/png")
w.Write(buf)

}

The example creates a simple web server that sends an image to the client. The image is located in the current working directory.

handler := http.HandlerFunc(handleRequest)

http.Handle("/image”, handler)

We map a handler to the /image path.

func handleRequest(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) { …

The handler function accepts two parameters: http.ResponseWriter and http.Request.

buf, err := ioutil.ReadFile(“sid.png”)

We read the image into the buffer.

w.Header().Set(“Content-Type”, “image/png”)

We set the header. The Content-Type content type is used for PNG image.

w.Write(buf)

The image data is written to the response body with Write.

The following is the http client.

main.go

package main

import ( “log”

"github.com/imroc/req/v3"

)

func main() {

client := req.C()

url := "http://localhost:8080/image"

_, err := client.R().SetOutputFile("sid.png").Get(url)

if err != nil {
    log.Fatal(err)
}

}

We use the Req package to get the image from the custom server.

Source

Go net/http package - reference

In this article we have showed how to download image files in Go.

Author

My name is Jan Bodnar, and I am a passionate programmer with extensive programming experience. I have been writing programming articles since 2007. To date, I have authored over 1,400 articles and 8 e-books. I possess more than ten years of experience in teaching programming.

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