django-hashable-file-fields 1.2.1

Django app providing HashableFileFieldsBaseModel, a base django model to automatically compute file-fields hashes

Purpose

The django-hashable-file-fields app provides a HashableFileFieldsBaseModel model mixin allowing to easily compute the hash of file fields.

How it works

In the simplest case, we have non-nullable file fields and we want to compute their md5 checksum. In this case, using this app is as simple as adding a hashable_fields list that contain, for each entry, the name of the file field, and the name of the hash field that will hold the computed checksum:

class MyModel(HashableFileFieldsBaseModel):
    img = models.ImageField(...)
    hash = models.CharField(...)
...
    hashable_fields = [
        ('img', 'hash')
    ]

The hash will be computed when the model will be saved.

Hashing

On each entry, a hash function can be specified (as a third entry in the tuple). By default it uses md5_hash from django_hashable_file_fields.hashers which simple compute the md5 checksum of the file content.

The hash function simply take the file field from an instance, and the instance itself (not used by the default function but could be useful on some cases).

Here is the signature of such a function:

def hashing_function(file_field: FileField, instance: HashableFileFieldsBaseModel) -> str

The django_hashable_file_fields.hashers module also provides a decorator (sort of) to allow nullable file fields to have a default hash value. It’s called with_defaut and must be used this way:

class MyModel(HashableFileFieldsBaseModel):
    nullable_img = models.ImageField(null=True, ...)
    nullable_hash = models.CharField(null=True, ...)
...
    hashable_fields = [
        ('nullable_img', 'nullable_hash', with_default(
                default='some-default-hash',
                hash_function=md5_hash,
                exceptions=[ValueError]
            )
        )
    ]

Only the default argument is mandatory. It’s the default value to use when an exception is raised by the hash function. The hash_function argument is optional, and if not set, the default one defined on the model will be used.

By default, the default value will be used on all exceptions. But if you want to be more specific, you can pass a list of exceptions to catch by passing it to the exceptions argument.

So the most common usage is:

class MyModel(HashableFileFieldsBaseModel):
    nullable_img = models.ImageField(null=True, ...)
    nullable_hash = models.CharField(null=True, ...)
...
    hashable_fields = [
        ('nullable_img', 'nullable_hash', with_default('some-default-hash'))
    ]

Configuring

In most cases, using hashable_fields will be enough. But the HashableFileFieldsBaseModel base model provides some ways to configure how it works

Let’s explain the whole process to see how things can be changed.

When the save method of an HashableFileFieldsBaseModel model is called, it starts by calling the compute_hashable_fields method (and it’s only after that it will call super().save to save the instance.)

In this method, it simply iterates on entries in the hashable_fields list and for each one, it will call a hash method (and not the hash function, at least not at this point) and save the result of this hash method into the right hash field.

The hash method is configurable. By default it’s compute_hash, but you can change it by specifying the name in the default_compute_hash_method attribute.

This method takes the name of the file field, and the hash function to use (this last argument is optional if you want to define your own method without using any hash function). And it simply returns the hash for the given field name.

Here is the signature of such a method:

def compute_hash(field_name: str, hash_function: function) -> str

This method (either compute_hash or your own if defined in default_compute_hash_method) will be called for each entry in hashable_fields, and will call the hash function for the file field defined by its name.

But you can easily add a method for a specific field by using the pattern defined in the compute_hash_method_pattern attribute, which is, by default, 'compute_hash_%(field_name)s'.

So for the img field, you can define the compute_hash_img method, and it will be called instead of compute_hash.

You can change this pattern by changing the compute_hash_method_pattern attribute. The pattern accept two placeholders, %(field_name)s, that will be replaced by the name of the file field to hash, and %(hash_field_name)s, that will be replaced by the name of the field that will store the computed hash (this placeholder is not used in the default pattern).

The methods to create using the patterns have the same signature as the default hash method as seen above.

Here is an example where the default hash method and function will be used to compute img_hash but a specific method will locally compute the hash for file_hash:

class MyModel(HashableFileFieldsBaseModel):
    img = models.ImageField(...)
    img_hash = models.CharField(...)

    file = models.FileField(...)
    file_hash = models.CharField(...)

    hashable_fields = [
        ('img', 'img_hash'),
        ('file', 'file_hash'),
    ]

    compute_hash_method_pattern = 'compute_hash_%(hash_field_name)s'

    def compute_file_hash(field_name, hash_function=None):
        return 'hash_for_file'

The last way to customize the HashableFileFieldsBaseModel model is to change the default hash function to use.

Defined in the default_hash_function, it’s by default the md5_hash function defined in django_hashable_file_fields.hashers. But if you want to use another hash function for all the file fields in a model, simply use another one by replacing this attribute, instead it to all the entries in hashable_fields.

It’s useful for example if all your file fields are nullable: simply use the with_default as seen above in the default_hash_function:

class MyModel(HashableFileFieldsBaseModel):
    nullable_img = models.ImageField(null=True, ...)
    nullable_hash = models.CharField(null=True, ...)

    default_hash_function = with_default(md5_hash, 'default_value')
...
    hashable_fields = [
        ('img', 'hash')
    ]

Note: when using with_default to define the default_hash_function attribute, the hash_function is mandatory (because if not set, it will use default_hash_function so a infinite recursive loop will occur)

Installation

Install from PyPI:

pip install django-hashable-file-fields

Requirements

• Python 3.9, 3.10, 3.11, 3.12

• Django 4.2, 5.0, 5.1