Fetch image from internet, modify and insert to database in python

Question

I'm trying to save images from one webpage to the database of another.

Here is a cut down version of the code:

POSTER_SIZE = (200, 310)

LargePoster = urllib2.urlopen(PosterURL).read()
SmallPoster = LargePoster.resize(POSTER_SIZE, Image.ANTIALIAS)

conn = MySQLdb.connect(DB_HOST, DB_USER, DB_PASS, DB_NAME, charset='utf8')
cur = conn()
cur.execute("UPDATE `table` SET `poster`=%s WHERE `id`=%d", (SmallPoster, ID))
cur.close()

Note: I do NOT want to keep the aspect ratio, so do not suggest Image.thumbnail() unless it can stretch it.

As you can see, I retrieve the image using urlopen() and read() but it returns a string. I need this string to be of class Image so I can manipulate it using PIL/Pillow and then later have it output as a string so I can send it to the database.

I know for a fact that all the images are compressed using JPEG.

Updated code for Peter

LargePosterString = urllib2.urlopen(MovieMeta['poster']).read()
LargePosterImage = Image.open(StringIO(LargePosterString))

SmallPosterImage = LargePosterImage.resize(POSTER_SIZE, Image.ANTIALIAS)
SmallPosterString = StringIO()

Format = 'JPEG'
SmallPosterImage.save(SmallPosterString.getvalue(), Format)

Answer 1

The docs suggest various ways, of which the simplest is probably to make your string into a thing that looks like a file:

from PIL import Image
from StringIO import StringIO

LargeData = urllib2.urlopen(PosterURL).read()

# read data from string
LargePoster = Image.open(StringIO(LargeData))

# After editing the image, turn it back into a string
# for saving in the database:
result = StringIO()
format = 'JPEG' # or whatever you want
SmallPoster.save(result, format)
SmallPosterString = result.getvalue()