CODEWITHSUNDEEP
databasedjangotextstorage
sup bro
sup bro

Reputation: 391

Django design: storing and retrieving text files

In my application I have a script, tied to a button onclick event, that generates a text file dynamically. These files are not too big (~3000 lines), but the influx of data can be slow (sometimes 30 minutes to capture all the streaming data). Once the process is done, I need to store this file so that the user can download it. I will also have text files generated from previous instances of this click event as well, and need to differentiate between them.

What is the best method to approach this? Can I store a text file of this size in the database, and then retrieve it? Should I instead just store a path to the text file that exists somewhere else, but in that case, where would it be stored and how can it be retrieved? If stored in a database, would a primary key be sufficient for pulling the text file I want?

Thanks!

Upvotes: 3

Views: 3513

Answers (1)

Jamie Cockburn
Jamie Cockburn

Reputation: 7555

If you want to be able to search the contents of these files, then storing them in the database isn't a terrible idea, but otherwise you should probably go for storing them in the filesystem.

In either case you would want to create a model to hold information about the files:

class TextFile(models.Model):
    user = models.ForeignKey(User, related_name='text_files')

    # if storing in database
    content = models.TextField() 

    # if storing in filesystem
    content = models.FileField(storage=FileSystemStorage(location='/path/to/files'))

You can then have file list view for a particular user like this:

@login_required
def file_list(request):
    files = TextFile.objects.filter(request.user)
    return render(request, 'file_list.html', {'files': files})

And a view to serve the files themselves:

@login_required
def servr_file(request, file_id):
    file = get_object_or_404(TextFile, user=request.user, pk=file_id)

    # if storing in database
    return HttpResponse(file.content)

    # if storing in filesystem
    return HttpResponse(file.content.read())

Upvotes: 5

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