Alternative upload method for Django FileField

Question

I have some django models that use a FileField, and users have been uploading files in the admin interface. We now have a problem that some files are quite big (1-3G), which makes http upload tricky.

There is a "container" class, and then "file" classes with a FK to the container. I have used inlines in the admin gui to make this easier for the users (container class form, with file class inlines)

I have found FilePathField, which I guess will be useful to let users scp / rsync files over to the server and then browse for and add details to them, but how can I get this in the admin? Do I need to just build a new form / view that creates the objects? Is there any way to somehow override the model in a custom admin form (and thus keep all the free admin goodness), that replaces filefield with filepathfield? Any other suggestions?

Thanks for any suggestions!

Answer 1

You mention that FilePathField works, but needs to have the webserver restarted to see new files. This happens because the options are gathered FilePathField.__init__, which is called once when the module is imported.

A fix would be to re-call the field's __init__ in the form's __init__:

def __init__(self, **kwargs):
    super(MyForm, self).__init__(**kwargs)
    self.fields['file'].__init__(path)

(That way the directory is scanned each time the form is instanced.)