Django Rest Framework File Upload API

2023-06-21T00:00:00+00:00

Uploading file via API is a very common requirement. In this guide we will learn to build Django Rest Framework</a> File Upload API.

🔗</a>Setup</h2>

Django: 4.2 </li>

Django Rest Framework: 3.14.0 </li>

Project Name: `fileupload</code> </li>`
`App Name: api</code> </li> </ul>`🔗</a>Add your app in INSTALLED_APPS</h3> In fileupload/settings.py</code> INSTALLED_APPS = [ ..... 'rest_framework', 'api', # your django app ]</code></pre>🔗</a>Update MEDIA path in settings.py</h3> We need to set the path where we want the uploaded files to be stored. In settings.py</code> MEDIA_URL = '/media/' MEDIA_ROOT = BASE_DIR / 'media'</code></pre>🔗</a>Update project’s urls.py file</h3> For Django to be able to serve media files we need to enable this using static</code> helper function that Django provides. This only works in DEBUG mode and only if folder location is local. source</a> In fileupload/urls.py</code> from django.conf import settings from django.conf.urls.static import static from django.contrib import admin from django.urls import include, path urlpatterns = [ path('admin/', admin.site.urls), path('api/', include('api.urls', namespace='api')), ] urlpatterns += static(settings.MEDIA_URL, document_root=settings.MEDIA_ROOT)</code></pre>🔗</a>Model</h2> Let’s create a Model where we store the file path (as file</code>) and file upload time (as uploaded_on</code>). So the uploaded file will be stored in media</code> folder and file</code> field will contain it’s path. In your api/models.py</code> class UploadedFile(models.Model): file = models.FileField() uploaded_on = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True) def str(self): return self.uploaded_on.date()</code></pre> Run the migration python manage.py makemigrations python manage.py migrate</code></pre>🔗</a>Serializer</h2> Creating a ModelSerializer for our Model UploadedFile</code>. ModelSerializer creates serializer fields based on Model passed and comes with buil-in save</code> method that saves passed data into database. In your api/serializers.py</code> from rest_framework import serializers from .models import UploadedFile class FileUploadSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer): class Meta: model = UploadedFile fields = ('file', 'uploaded_on',)</code></pre>🔗</a>View</h2> Now we create the view class FileUploadAPIView</code> (sub-class of APIView) to save the uploaded file. Few things to note: Generally the JSONParser</code> is set as the default parser in DRF so that we can send the request in JSON format. However it is not advised/convenient to upload file in JSON. </li> form-data</code> is the best way to upload the file, to enable this we need to pass MultiPartParser</code> and FormParser</code> as our parser_classes</code> in our view. </li> Only MultiPartParser</code> can be passed to enable file uploading but as per DRF API Guide on MultiPartParser</a>, we should use both parser classes to fully support HTML form data. </li> </ul> In api/views.py</code> from rest_framework import status from rest_framework.parsers import FormParser, MultiPartParser from rest_framework.response import Response from rest_framework.views import APIView from .serializers import FileUploadSerializer class FileUploadAPIView(APIView): parser_classes = (MultiPartParser, FormParser) serializer_class = FileUploadSerializer def post(self, request, *args, **kwargs): serializer = self.serializer_class(data=request.data) if serializer.is_valid(): # you can access the file like this from serializer # uploaded_file = serializer.validated_data["file"] serializer.save() return Response( serializer.data, status=status.HTTP_201_CREATED ) return Response( serializer.errors, status=status.HTTP_400_BAD_REQUEST )</code></pre>🔗</a>Urls</h2> Let’s connect our view in urls to be able to receive requests on it. In api/urls.py</code> from django.urls import path from .views import FileUploadAPIView, ImageUploadAPIView app_name = 'api' urlpatterns = [ path('upload-file/', FileUploadAPIView.as_view(), name='upload-file'), ]</code></pre>🔗</a>Testing API Endpoint</h2> Start the server python manage.py runserver</code></pre>🔗</a>Postman</h3> File upload using postman </figcaption></figure> Method: POST (as per our view) </li> URL: http://localhost:8000/api/upload-file/ </li> Body Type: form-data </li> Values to be passed file as KEY (change the type to File in dropdown), Browse and select a file for VALUE</li> </ul> </li> </ul> 🔗</a>cURL</h3> curl --location --request POST 'http://localhost:8000/api/upload-file/' --form 'file=@"/path/to/yourfile.pdf"'</code></pre>🔗</a>NodeJS - Axios</h3> var axios = require('axios'); var FormData = require('form-data'); var fs = require('fs'); var data = new FormData(); data.append('file', fs.createReadStream('/path/to/yourfile.pdf')); var config = { method: 'post', url: 'http://localhost:8000/api/upload-file/', headers: { ...data.getHeaders(), }, data: data, }; axios(config) .then(function (response) { console.log(JSON.stringify(response.data)); }) .catch(function (error) { console.log(error); });</code></pre> Checkout this guide to learn how to store static and media files in AWS S3</a>