To use Django FileField or FilePathField?

Question

I'm a bit confused about which field to use. What I need is just a Field that will hold a file (audio and/or another one for an image)

The FileField seems to be specifically for uploading and I think it is a bit of overkill for what I need, I also don't like how it will automatically upload and rename the files to a unique filename (file_FHjgh758.txt) everytime something is uploaded.

The problem I have with the FilePathField is that it seems to require an absolute path, which would obviously be different from dev to production, I got around this by adding this to the model...

import os

class Foo(models.Model):

    path = os.path.dirname(os.path.dirname(__file__))
    path = os.join(path, 'media')
    audio = models.FilePathField(path=path)

I have no idea if this is safe or proper, and there aren't many examples online or in the docs to draw from.

To be clear, I just want to have a field which I can point to a file (audio or image) somewhere in my system. What would be the best way to go about doing this?

Answer 1

If you want to refer to files that are already on your filesystem rather than user uploaded files, then FilePathField is the one that you want.

In this regard a few comments:

• Don't point to a path that is inside your app's source tree. That is not safe.

• You can use settings or environment variables to handle development vs. production paths, e.g., put a FILE_PATH_FIELD_DIRECTORY setting in your development/production settings files and refer to this setting from your app:

  from django.conf import settings
  
  class Foo(models.Model):
      audio = models.FilePathField(path=settings.FILE_PATH_FIELD_DIRECTORY)