Serving large files ( with high loads ) in Django

Question

I\'ve been using a method for serving downloads but since it was not secure i decided to change that . ( the method was a link to the original file in storage , but the risk

Answer 1

Your opening of the image loads it in memory and this is what causes the increase in load under heavy use. As posted by Martin the real solution is to serve the file directly.

Here is another approach, which will stream your file in chunks without loading it in memory.

import os
import mimetypes
from django.http import StreamingHttpResponse
from django.core.servers.basehttp import FileWrapper


def download_file(request):
   the_file = '/some/file/name.png'
   filename = os.path.basename(the_file)
   chunk_size = 8192
   response = StreamingHttpResponse(FileWrapper(open(the_file, 'rb'), chunk_size),
                           content_type=mimetypes.guess_type(the_file)[0])
   response['Content-Length'] = os.path.getsize(the_file)    
   response['Content-Disposition'] = "attachment; filename=%s" % filename
   return response