Only accept a certain file type in FileField, server-side

Question

How can I restrict FileField to only accept a certain type of file (video, audio, pdf, etc.) in an elegant way, server-side?

Answer 1

First. Create a file named formatChecker.py inside the app where the you have the model that has the FileField that you want to accept a certain file type.

This is your formatChecker.py:

from django.db.models import FileField
from django.forms import forms
from django.template.defaultfilters import filesizeformat
from django.utils.translation import ugettext_lazy as _

class ContentTypeRestrictedFileField(FileField):
    """
    Same as FileField, but you can specify:
        * content_types - list containing allowed content_types. Example: ['application/pdf', 'image/jpeg']
        * max_upload_size - a number indicating the maximum file size allowed for upload.
            2.5MB - 2621440
            5MB - 5242880
            10MB - 10485760
            20MB - 20971520
            50MB - 5242880
            100MB 104857600
            250MB - 214958080
            500MB - 429916160
"""
def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
    self.content_types = kwargs.pop("content_types")
    self.max_upload_size = kwargs.pop("max_upload_size")

    super(ContentTypeRestrictedFileField, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)

def clean(self, *args, **kwargs):        
    data = super(ContentTypeRestrictedFileField, self).clean(*args, **kwargs)

    file = data.file
    try:
        content_type = file.content_type
        if content_type in self.content_types:
            if file._size > self.max_upload_size:
                raise forms.ValidationError(_('Please keep filesize under %s. Current filesize %s') % (filesizeformat(self.max_upload_size), filesizeformat(file._size)))
        else:
            raise forms.ValidationError(_('Filetype not supported.'))
    except AttributeError:
        pass        

    return data

Second. In your models.py, add this:

from formatChecker import ContentTypeRestrictedFileField

Then instead of using 'FileField', use this 'ContentTypeRestrictedFileField'.

Example:

class Stuff(models.Model):
    title = models.CharField(max_length=245)
    handout = ContentTypeRestrictedFileField(upload_to='uploads/', content_types=['video/x-msvideo', 'application/pdf', 'video/mp4', 'audio/mpeg', ],max_upload_size=5242880,blank=True, null=True)

Those are the things you have to when you want to only accept a certain file type in FileField.