How to base64 encode an image from URL rather than file?

I need to get an image via a URL, and without saving the image locally base64 encode into a string which in then past as an api call via a URL. Im able to do it no problems if i can save the file locally with:

with open(photo.jpg, "rb") as file:
       image = [base64.b64encode(file.read()).decode("ascii")]

After some research I thought I had found a way with the following of doing it without saving:

URL = 'http://www.w3schools.com/css/trolltunga.jpg'

with urllib.request.urlopen(URL) as url:
    f = io.BytesIO(url.read())
    image = base64.b64encode(f.read()).decode("ascii")

however I get the following error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:Usersrich2DocumentsPythonget_image_streamapp3.py", line 13, in <module>
    image = base64.b64encode(img.read()).decode("ascii")
  File "C:UsersDocumentsPythonget_imagevenvlibsite-packagesPILImage.py", line 546, in __getattr__
    raise AttributeError(name)
AttributeError: read

Im clearly missing something but cannot find a workable answer anywhere.

url.read already returns a byte string. So your code should just be

from urllib.request import urlopen
import base64

URL = 'http://www.w3schools.com/css/trolltunga.jpg'

with urlopen(URL) as url:
    f = url.read()
    image = base64.b64encode(f).decode("ascii")

For future questions please include import statements.

You attempt to read the image twice. Once is enough.

with urllib.request.urlopen(URL) as url:
    image = base64.b64encode(url.read()).decode("ascii")

I am not sure what changes have you made because your error trace shows different code. Maybe you are not importing necessary modules. Here’s the full code that worked for me:

import urllib.request
import io
import base64

URL = 'http://www.w3schools.com/css/trolltunga.jpg'

with urllib.request.urlopen(URL) as url:
    f = io.BytesIO(url.read())
    image = base64.b64encode(f.read()).decode("ascii")