PathDownloadView

PathDownloadView serves file given a path on local filesystem.

Use this view whenever you just have a path, outside storage or model.

Warning

Take care of path validation, especially if you compute paths from user input: an attacker may be able to download files from arbitrary locations. In most cases, you should consider managing files in storages, because they implement default security mechanisms.

Simple example

Setup a view to stream files given path:

import os

from django_downloadview import PathDownloadView

# Let's initialize some fixtures.
app_dir = os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__))
project_dir = os.path.dirname(app_dir)
fixtures_dir = os.path.join(project_dir, "fixtures")
#: Path to a text file that says 'Hello world!'.
hello_world_path = os.path.join(fixtures_dir, "hello-world.txt")

#: Serve ``fixtures/hello-world.txt`` file.
static_path = PathDownloadView.as_view(path=hello_world_path)

Base options

PathDownloadView inherits from DownloadMixin, which has various options such as basename or attachment.

Computing path dynamically

Override the PathDownloadView.get_path() method to adapt path resolution to your needs:

import os

from django_downloadview import PathDownloadView

# Let's initialize some fixtures.
app_dir = os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__))
project_dir = os.path.dirname(app_dir)
fixtures_dir = os.path.join(project_dir, "fixtures")
#: Path to a text file that says 'Hello world!'.

class DynamicPathDownloadView(PathDownloadView):
    """Serve file in ``settings.MEDIA_ROOT``.

    .. warning::

       Make sure to prevent "../" in path via URL patterns.

    .. note::

       This particular setup would be easier to perform with
       :class:`StorageDownloadView`

    """

    def get_path(self):
        """Return path inside fixtures directory."""
        # Get path from URL resolvers or as_view kwarg.
        relative_path = super().get_path()
        # Make it absolute.
        absolute_path = os.path.join(fixtures_dir, relative_path)
        return absolute_path


dynamic_path = DynamicPathDownloadView.as_view()

The view accepts a path argument you can setup either in as_view or via URLconfs:

from django.urls import path, re_path

from demoproject.path import views

app_name = "path"
urlpatterns = [
    path("static-path/", views.static_path, name="static_path"),
    re_path(
        r"^dynamic-path/(?P<path>[a-zA-Z0-9_-]+\.[a-zA-Z0-9]{1,4})$",
        views.dynamic_path,
        name="dynamic_path",
    ),
]

API reference

class django_downloadview.views.path.PathDownloadView(**kwargs)

Bases: BaseDownloadView

Serve a file using filename.

path = None

Server-side name (including path) of the file to serve.

Filename is supposed to be an absolute filename of a file located on the local filesystem.

path_url_kwarg = 'path'

Name of the URL argument that contains path.

get_path()

Return actual path of the file to serve.

Default implementation simply returns view’s path.

Override this method if you want custom implementation. As an example, path could be relative and your custom get_path() implementation makes it absolute.

get_file()

Use path to return wrapper around file to serve.