[Django]-Django FileField (or ImageField) open() method returns None for valid file?

A FileField will give you a file-like object and there is no need to call open() on it. In your example, just call task.seq_file.file.

Why is that? There are many storage backends for FileField, and many of them are not backed by a file in disk (think of S3 storage, for example). I guess that is why the documentation says it returns a file-like object, not a file. For some kinds of storage the “open” method makes no sense.

When in doubt, check the code. Here’s an excerpt from django.db.models.fields.files:

def open(self, mode='rb'):
    self._require_file()
    self.file.open(mode)
# open() doesn't alter the file's contents, but it does reset the pointer
open.alters_data = True

So, in the case of a FileField, open reopens the file using the specified mode. Then, once you call open, you can continue to use methods like read using the newly applied mode.

Surprisingly but django.db.models.fields.files does not utilize file.storage.exists() method so I had to implement my own small function to have cross-storage compatible check for actual physical file existence:

# Check whether actual file of FileField exists (is not deleted / moved out).
def file_exists(obj):
    return obj.storage.exists(obj.name)