Using Azure Storage SDK with Django (and removing dependency on django-storages entirely)

Question

Does anyone have any tips on using azure-storage directly with Django? I ask because currently I'm trying to set up Azure Cloud Storage for my Django app (hosted on Azure VM with Ubuntu OS), and django-storages doesn't seem to be interfacing with Azure Storage SDK correctly (known issue: see here). The fix listed there won't work for me given my Django version is < 1.6.2.

Thus I'll need to use Azure-storage directly with Django. Has anyone set that up before? I need to save images and mp3s on the Cloud Storage.

---

Currently, in my models.py, I have:

def upload_to_location(instance, filename):
    try:
        blocks = filename.split('.') 
        ext = blocks[-1]
        filename = "%s.%s" % (uuid.uuid4(), ext)
        instance.title = blocks[0]
        return os.path.join('uploads/', filename)
    except Exception as e:
        print '%s (%s)' % (e.message, type(e))
        return 0

class Photo(models.Model):
    description = models.TextField(validators=[MaxLengthValidator(500)])
    submitted_on = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)
    image_file = models.ImageField(upload_to=upload_to_location, null=True, blank=True )

And then django-storages and boto take care of the rest. However, when I hook django-storages up with Azure Cloud Storage, I get the following error:

Exception Value:      
'module' object has no attribute 'WindowsAzureMissingResourceError'

Exception Location:     
/home/mhb11/.virtualenvs/myvirtualenv/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/storages/backends/azure_storage.py in exists, line 46

And the relevant snippet of the code is:

def exists(self, name):
    try:
        self.connection.get_blob_properties(
            self.azure_container, name)
    except azure.WindowsAzureMissingResourceError:
        return False
    else:
        return True

Seems that the connection to the Azure container is failing. In my settings.py, I have:

    DEFAULT_FILE_STORAGE = 'storages.backends.azure_storage.AzureStorage'
    AZURE_ACCOUNT_NAME = 'photodatabasestorage'
    AZURE_ACCOUNT_KEY = 'something'
    AZURE_CONTAINER = 'somecontainer'

As described earlier, I need a solution that bypasses django-storages entirely, and just relies on Azure Storage SDK to get the job done.

Note: ask me for more information in case you need it.

Answer 1

We can directly use Azure-Storage python SDK in the Django apps just like using the sdk in common python applications. You can refer to official guide for getting started.

Here is the test code snippet in the Django app:

def putfiles(request):
blob_service = BlobService(account_name=accountName, account_key=accountKey)
PROJECT_ROOT = path.dirname(path.abspath(path.dirname(__file__)))
try:
    blob_service.put_block_blob_from_path(
            'mycontainer',
            '123.jpg',
            path.join(path.join(PROJECT_ROOT,'uploads'),'123.jpg'),
            x_ms_blob_content_type='image/jpg'
    )
    result = True
except:
    print(sys.exc_info()[1])
    result = False
return HttpResponse(result)


def listfiles(request):
    blob_service = BlobService(account_name=accountName, account_key=accountKey)
    blobs = []
    result = []
    marker = None
    while True:
        batch = blob_service.list_blobs('mycontainer', marker=marker)
        blobs.extend(batch)
        if not batch.next_marker:
            break
        marker = batch.next_marker
    for blob in blobs:
        result.extend([{'name':blob.name}])
    return HttpResponse(json.dumps(result))