How to prevent Django from changing file name when a file with that name already exists?

Question

In my case I allow user to upload an avatar picture and use user_id as filename, simply. So there will be 1.jpg, 2.jpg, etc.

However I found if I upload a new avatar for some account that already has one uploaded, let's say user #10, the new file will be named as "10_1.jpg". This is OKay, however I don't need it and I hope new file could overwrite the old one - it also saves some disk space anyway.

I googled and searched but couldn't find a clue. I was hoping there would be an option for ImageField or FileField but it's not there.

Thanks for help!

Answer 1

You should define your own storage, inherit it from FileSystemStorage, and override get_available_name function in it. The use this storage for your imagefield. Something like this:

class OverwriteStorage(FileSystemStorage):

    def get_available_name(self, name):
        if self.exists(name):
            os.remove(os.path.join(SOME_PATH, name))
        return name

fs = OverwriteStorage(location=SOME_PATH)

class YourModel(models.Model):
    image_file = models.ImageField(storage=fs)

Answer 2

Michael Gendin's solution above works great for Django 2.1 (Hello from 2018!). It is only necessary to add the "max_length" attribute to the "get_available_name" method:

def get_available_name(self, name, max_length=None):