How to base64 encode a PDF file in Python

How should I base64 encode a PDF file for transport over XML-RPC in Python?

Can you base64 encode a PDF?

Sometimes you have to send or output a PDF file within a text document (for example, HTML, JSON, XML), but you cannot do this because binary characters will damage the syntax of the text document. To prevent this, for example, you can encode PDF file to Base64 and embed it using the data URI.

If you don't want to use the xmlrpclib's Binary class, you can just use the .encode() method of strings:

a = open("pdf_reference.pdf", "rb").read().encode("base64")

Actually, after some more digging, it looks like the xmlrpclib module may have the piece I need with it's Binary helper class:

binary_obj = xmlrpclib.Binary( open('foo.pdf').read() )

Here's an example from the Trac XML-RPC documentation


import xmlrpclib 
server = xmlrpclib.ServerProxy("http://athomas:password@localhost:8080/trunk/login/xmlrpc") 
server.wiki.putAttachment('WikiStart/t.py', xmlrpclib.Binary(open('t.py').read()))