[Django]-How to assign a local file to the FileField in Django?

58👍

Django uses it’s own file type (with a sightly enhanced functionality). Anyway Django’s file type works like a decorator, so you can simply wrap it around existing file objects to meet the needs of the Django API.

from django.core.files import File

local_file = open('mytest.pdf')
djangofile = File(local_file)
pdfImage.myfile.save('new', djangofile)
local_file.close()

You can of course decorate the file on the fly by writing the following (one line less):

pdfImage.myfile.save('new', File(local_file))
👤tux21b

4👍

If you don’t want to open the file, you can also move the file to the media folder and directly set myfile.name with the relative path to MEDIA_ROOT :

import os
os.rename('mytest.pdf', '/media/files/mytest.pdf')
pdfImage = FileSaver()
pdfImage.myfile.name = '/files/mytest.pdf'
pdfImage.save()

3👍

If you want to upload a local file in django, you can do this

from django.core.files import File

file = open(filepath, 'rb')
file_to_upload = File(file, name=f'{your_desired_name}')
file.close()

Now you can pass the file to django rest serializer to upload or whatever your use-case is. If passing this file to serializer, be sure to close it after it has been passed to serializer.

Note: The filepath here can be django’s temporary file or any stored file.

👤ashar

2👍

if you are getting error like:

UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0x89 in position...

then you have to open the file in binary mode: open("mytest.pdf", "rb")

full example:

from django.core.files import File

pdfImage = FileSaver()
pdfImage.myfile.save('new.pdf', File(open('mytest.pdf','rb')))

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