Configuration

Add to the settings:

INSTALLED_APPS += (
    'private_storage',
)

PRIVATE_STORAGE_ROOT = '/path/to/private-media/'
PRIVATE_STORAGE_AUTH_FUNCTION = 'apps.utils.private_storage.permissions.allow_staff'

Add to urls.py:

import private_storage.urls

urlpatterns += [
    url('^private-media/', include(private_storage.urls)),
]

Usage

In a Django model, add the PrivateFileField:

from django.db import models
from private_storage.fields import PrivateFileField

class MyModel(models.Model):
    title = models.CharField("Title", max_length=200)
    file = PrivateFileField("File")

The PrivateFileField also accepts the following kwargs:

• upload_to: the optional subfolder in the PRIVATE_STORAGE_ROOT.

• upload_subfolder: a function that defines the folder, it receives the current model instance.

• content_types: allowed content types

• max_file_size: maximum file size.

• storage: the storage object to use, defaults to private_storage.storage.private_storage

Defining access rules

The PRIVATE_STORAGE_AUTH_FUNCTION defines which user may access the files. By default, this only includes superusers.

The following options are available out of the box:

• private_storage.permissions.allow_authenticated

• private_storage.permissions.allow_staff

• private_storage.permissions.allow_superuser

You can create a custom function, and use that instead. The function receives a private_storate.models.PrivateFile object, which has the following fields:

• request: the Django request.

• storage: the storage engine used to retrieve the file.

• relative_name: the file name in the storage.

• full_path: the full file system path.

• exists(): whether the file exists.

• content_type: the HTTP content type.

Optimizing large file transfers

By default, the files are served by the Django instance. This can be inefficient, since the whole file needs to be read in chunks and passed through the WSGI buffers, OS kernel and webserver. In effect, the complete file is copied several times through memory buffers.

Hence, webservers offer a method to send the file on behalf of the backend application. This happens with the sendfile() system call, which can be enabled with the following settings:

PRIVATE_STORAGE_SERVER = 'apache'

PRIVATE_STORAGE_SERVER = 'nginx'
PRIVATE_STORAGE_INTERNAL_URL = '/private-x-accel-redirect/'

location /private-x-accel-redirect/ {
  internal;
  alias   /path/to/private-media/;
}

Using multiple storages

The PrivateFileField accepts a storage kwarg, hence you can initialize multiple private_storage.storage.PrivateStorage objects, each providing files from a different location and base_url.

For example:

from django.db import models
from private_storage.fields import PrivateFileField
from private_storage.storage import PrivateStorage

my_storage = PrivateStorage(
    location='/path/to/storage2/',
    base_url='/private-documents2/'
)

class MyModel(models.Model):
    file = PrivateFileField(storage=my_storage)

Then create a view to serve those files:

from private_storage.views import PrivateStorageView
from .models import my_storage

class MyStorageView(PrivateStorageView):
    storage = my_storage

    def can_access_file(self, private_file):
        # This overrides PRIVATE_STORAGE_AUTH_FUNCTION
        return self.request.is_superuser

And expose that URL:

urlpatterns += [
    url(^private-documents2/(?P<path>.*)$', views.MyStorageView.as_view()),
]

Contributing

This module is designed to be generic. In case there is anything you didn’t like about it, or think it’s not flexible enough, please let us know. We’d love to improve it!