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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.


*************************
Django's static file view
*************************

`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.


***************
django-sendfile
***************

`django-sendfile`_ is a wrapper around web-server specific methods for sending
files to web clients.

API is made of a single ``sendfile()`` function, which returns a download
response. The download response type depends on the chosen backend, which could
be Django, Lighttpd's X-Sendfile, Nginx's X-Accel...

It seems that django-senfile main focus is simplicity: you call the
``sendfile()`` method inside your views.

Django-downloadview main focus is reusability: you configure (or override)
class-based views depending on the use case.

As of 2012-04-11, ``django-sendfile`` (version 0.3.2) seems quite popular and
may be a good alternative **provided you serve files that live in local
filesystem**, because the ``sendfile()`` method only accepts filenames relative
to local filesystem (i.e. using ``os.path.exists``).

Django-downloadview (since version 1.1) handles file wrappers, and thus allows
you to serve files from more locations:

* models,
* storages,
* local filesystem,
* remote URL (using `requests`_),
* in-memory (or generated) files (such as StringIO),
* ... and your custom ones with little efforts.


********************
django-private-files
********************

`django-private-files`_ provides utilities for controlling access to static
files based on conditions you can specify within your Django application.


**********************
django-protected-files
**********************

`django-protected-files`_ is a Django application that lets you serve protected
static files via your frontend server after authorizing the user against
``django.contrib.auth``.

As of 2012-12-10, this project seems inactive.


.. rubric:: References

.. target-notes::

.. _`Django has a builtin static file view`:
   https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.4/ref/contrib/staticfiles/#static-file-development-view
.. _`django-sendfile`: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/django-sendfile
.. _`requests`: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/requests
.. _`django-private-files`: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/django-private-files
.. _`django-protected-files`:
   https://github.com/lincolnloop/django-protected-files