django-bft 0.2.0

Big File Transfer Application written in Django

Introduction

django-bft is a Django application that handles large file transfers. The application’s frontend has both a flash upload as well as a javascript upload version.

django-bft was origianlly created for Utah State University to fulfill a specific need of sending large files through email.

The site can be viewed at https://bft.usu.edu

Requirements

1. Web server

   Apache using mod-wsgi is the prefered web server of choice and, currently, is the only web server that has been tested with django-bft. Web servers such as Lighttp and Nginx may work, but have not been tested.

   Note: django-bft uses ajax to display a progress bar during upload. As such, the Django development web server will not be able to upload files since it is only single threaded.

2. Database

   All databases supported by Django should work with django-bft. (Postgres, MySQL, and Oracle)

3. Django

   django-bft has been created using the latest version of Django (1.3). Django 1.1x or later will probably work, but with the change in how static files are handled, you are advised to install django-staticfiles for static file serving.

   Refer to: https://github.com/jezdez/django-staticfiles

Installation

To get this application up and running, please follow the steps below:

1. Create a Django production environment using the setup of your choice. Refer to: http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/intro/install/

2. Create a new Django Project:

   $ django-admin.py startproject <projectname>

3. Install django-bft to either your PYTHON_PATH or in a folder inside your project:

   • Install from pip:

     $ pip install django-bft

   • Download and install from source:

     $ python setup.py install

   • Install source to local directory:

     $ python setup.py build
     $ cp build/lib/bft /<PROJECT_ROOT>/

4. Add the following to your settings.py file:

   • Add ‘bft’, ‘staticfiles’ and ‘admin’ to INSTALLED_APPS:

     INSTALLED_APPS = (
             ...
             'django.contrib.admin',
             'django.contrib.staticfiles',
             'bft',
     )

   • Make sure your static file finders are configured:

     STATICFILES_FINDERS = (
         'django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.AppDirectoriesFinder',
     )

   • Add ‘bft.context_processors.bft’ to the context processors:

     from django.conf import global_settings
     ...
     
     TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS = (
         'bft.context_processors.bft',
     ) + global_settings.TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS

   • Add ‘bft.utils.upload_handlers.UploadProgressCachedHandler’ to the file upload handlers:

     from django.conf import global_settings
     ...
     
     FILE_UPLOAD_HANDLERS = (
         'bft.utils.upload_handlers.UploadProgressCachedHandler',
     ) + global_settings.FILE_UPLOAD_HANDLERS

   • (Optional) - You might want to change the location of the FILE_UPLOAD_TEMP_DIR. This setting is the location of where files will be temporarily be stored while uploading. The default for this is the operating systems temp directory. If space is limited at this directory, it is advised to change this setting.

5. Modify app_settings.py as needed.

6. If reCaptcha is to be used, a public and private key will be needed.

   Refer to: http://www.google.com/recaptcha

   The python reCaptcha library is also required. You can install it onto your PYTHON_PATH by using pip:

   $ pip install recaptcha-client

7. Because this app is designed to upload very large files, enforcing size restrictions using Django is not recomended and rarly works. It is better to add this enforcement on the web server layer. You can do this on Apache by adding the following directives to your Apache config:

   LimitRequestBody 1073741824 #The same size as specified in your app_settings.py file
   ErrorDocument 413 http://<SERVER_NAME>/413error/

8. If you care about your files being secured, you will probably want to protect the directory where files are stored using apache:

   <Location /media/files>
           Order allow,deny
           Deny from all
   </Location>

   You may also want to consider adding the necessary directives to redirect non-ssl traffic over to ssl:

   RewriteEngine On
   RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
   RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI}

9. Map your urls.py to django-bft’s urls. An example of this would be:

   urlpatterns = patterns('',
           ...
           (r'', include('bft.urls')),
   )

10. Setup a cron job to handle file archiving and deletion. An example of this could be:

    #!/bin/sh
    
    ./manage.py deleteuploads
    ./manage.py deletetempfiles

11. Don’t forget to collect your static files and sync your database:

    $ python manage.py syncdb
    $ python manage.py collectstatic