Serving IIIF documents from Django¶

djiiif ships an optional URLconf and a set of drop-in views so a Django instance can serve IIIF documents itself — no separate image server needed for the metadata. Each returns application/ld+json with the permissive Access-Control-Allow-Origin: * header that IIIF clients require, and derives the document id from the request URL so it always matches where it is served.

Mount the URLconf¶

urls.py¶

from django.urls import include, path

urlpatterns = [
    path("iiif/", include("djiiif.urls")),
]

Endpoints¶

URL (under `/iiif/`)	View	Requires
`<identifier>/info.json`	`serve_info_json`	a stored image
`<identifier>/manifest`	`serve_manifest`	a stored image
`collection`	`serve_collection`	`IIIF_COLLECTION_SOURCE` (Richer manifests & collections)
`activity/collection`, `activity/page/<n>`	`serve_activity_collection` / `serve_activity_page`	`IIIF_ACTIVITY_SOURCE` (Harvestable streams (Change Discovery))
`<identifier>/annotations/1`	`serve_annotation_page`	`IIIF_ANNOTATIONS_BACKEND` (Annotations & search)
`<identifier>/search?q=`	`serve_search`	a search or annotations backend (Annotations & search)

The info.json and manifest views map an identifier back to a stored image via Django’s default storage and read its dimensions on demand. The other endpoints read no image storage — they render project-supplied data.

An image stored as uploads/photo.jpg is served at:

/iiif/uploads%2Fphoto.jpg/info.json
/iiif/uploads%2Fphoto.jpg/manifest

404 behavior¶

Every settings-driven endpoint is invisible until configured — if its setting is unset, the URL returns 404. The info.json and manifest views 404 when the identifier does not resolve to a readable image.

Tip

Serving identifiers that contain encoded slashes requires your web server to allow encoded slashes in the path (e.g. Apache’s AllowEncodedSlashes On); flat identifiers need no such configuration.

Storage¶

The built-in views use Django’s default storage backend. If your media lives elsewhere, either configure default storage accordingly or write thin views that call the builders directly with your own storage.