How to create a file and save it to a model s FileField in Django

Question

Here's my model. What I want to do is generate a new file and overwrite the existing one whenever a model instance is saved:

class Kitten(models.Model):
    claw_size = ...
    license_file = models.FileField(blank=True, upload_to='license')

    def save(self, *args, **kwargs):
        #Generate a new license file overwriting any previous version
        #and update file path
        self.license_file = ???
        super(Request,self).save(*args, **kwargs)

How do I generate a file, assign it to a model field and have Django store it in the right place?

Answer 1

Hello @kartik,

Basically, a field declared as a FileField, when accessed, gives you an instance of class FieldFile, which gives you several methods to interact with the underlying file. So, what you need to do is:

self.license_file.save(new_name, new_contents)

where new_name is the filename you wish assigned and new_contents is the content of the file. Note that new_contents must be an instance of either django.core.files.File or django.core.files.base.ContentFile (see given links to manual for the details). The two choices boil down to:

# Using File
f = open('/path/to/file')
self.license_file.save(new_name, File(f))
# Using ContentFile
self.license_file.save(new_name, ContentFile('A string with the file content'))

Hope it helps!!

Thank you!