Django - Serve files for download

Question

I have a collection of documents(.pptx files) that I wish to make available for download to users. I am using django for this purpose. I have some parts figured out using these links:

having-django-serve-downloadable-files

The problem I am facing is in connecting these parts. Relevant code pieces-

settings.py file

MEDIA_ROOT = PROJECT_DIR.parent.child('media')
MEDIA_URL = '/media/'

The html template. The variable slide_loc has the file location (ex: path/to/file/filename.pptx)

<div class = 'project_data slide_loc'>
<a href = "{{ MEDIA_URL }}{{ slide_loc }}">Download </a>
</div>

The views.py file

def doc_dwnldr(request, file_path, original_filename):
    fp = open(file_path, 'rb')
    response = HttpResponse(fp.read())
    fp.close()
    type, encoding = mimetypes.guess_type(original_filename)
    if type is None:
        type = 'application/octet-stream'
    response['Content-Type'] = type
    response['Content-Length'] = str(os.stat(file_path).st_size)
    if encoding is not None:
        response['Content-Encoding'] = encoding

    # To inspect details for the below code, see http://greenbytes.de/tech/tc2231/
    if u'WebKit' in request.META['HTTP_USER_AGENT']:
        # Safari 3.0 and Chrome 2.0 accepts UTF-8 encoded string directly.
        filename_header = 'filename=%s' % original_filename.encode('utf-8')
    elif u'MSIE' in request.META['HTTP_USER_AGENT']:
        # IE does not support internationalized filename at all.
        # It can only recognize internationalized URL, so we do the trick via routing rules.
        filename_header = ''
    else:
        # For others like Firefox, we follow RFC2231 (encoding extension in HTTP headers).
        filename_header = 'filename*=UTF-8\'\'%s' % urllib.quote(original_filename.encode('utf-8'))
    response['Content-Disposition'] = 'attachment; ' + filename_header
    return response

the urls.py file

if settings.DEBUG:
    urlpatterns += static(settings.MEDIA_URL,
                          document_root=settings.MEDIA_ROOT)

The details that I am looking for is - when a user clicks on the download button, how do I map the url and doc_dwnldr function in the views.py file

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 25 '17 at 13:53

In your urls, you need to create something like:

url(r'^(?P<file_path>\w+)/(?P<original_filename>\w+)/$', views.doc_dwnldr, name='doc_dwnldr')

which will map to the function you have when the link is clicked in your template.

Then in your template, do something like:

<a href="{% url 'doc_dwnldr' file_path='file_path_variable_here', original_filename='filename_variable_here' %}">Download </a>

Django - Serve files for download

1 Answers1