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Alternatives and related projects
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This document presents other projects that provide similar or complementary
functionalities. It focuses on differences with django-downloadview.


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Django's static file view
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`Django has a builtin static file view`_. It can stream files. As explained in
Django documentation, it is designed for development purposes. For production,
static files'd better be served by some optimized server.

Django-downloadview can replace Django's builtin static file view:

* perform actions with Django when receiving download requests: check
  permissions, generate files, gzip, logging, signals...
* delegate actual download to a reverse proxy for increased performance.
* disable optimization middlewares or decorators in development, if you want to
  serve files with Django.


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References
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.. target-notes::

.. _`Django has a builtin static file view`:
   https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.4/ref/contrib/staticfiles/#static-file-development-view