Handling large file uploads with Flask

Question

What would be the best way to handle very large file uploads (1 GB +) with Flask?

My application essentially takes multiple files assigns them one unique file number

Answer 1

I think the super simple way to get around that simply sends the file in lots of small parts/chunks. So there are going to be two parts to making this work, the front-end (website) and backend (server). For the front-end part, you can use something like Dropzone.js which has no additional dependencies and decent CSS included. All you have to do is add the class dropzone to a form and it automatically turns it into one of their special drag and drop fields (you can also click and select).

However, by default, dropzone does not chunk files. Luckily, it is really easy to enable. Here's a sample file upload form with DropzoneJS and chunking enabled:

And Here's the Back-end part using flask:

import logging
import os

from flask import render_template, Blueprint, request, make_response
from werkzeug.utils import secure_filename

from pydrop.config import config

blueprint = Blueprint('templated', __name__, template_folder='templates')

log = logging.getLogger('pydrop')


@blueprint.route('/')
@blueprint.route('/index')
def index():
    # Route to serve the upload form
    return render_template('index.html',
                           page_name='Main',
                           project_name="pydrop")


@blueprint.route('/upload', methods=['POST'])
def upload():
    file = request.files['file']

    save_path = os.path.join(config.data_dir, secure_filename(file.filename))
    current_chunk = int(request.form['dzchunkindex'])

    # If the file already exists it's ok if we are appending to it,
    # but not if it's new file that would overwrite the existing one
    if os.path.exists(save_path) and current_chunk == 0:
        # 400 and 500s will tell dropzone that an error occurred and show an error
        return make_response(('File already exists', 400))

    try:
        with open(save_path, 'ab') as f:
            f.seek(int(request.form['dzchunkbyteoffset']))
            f.write(file.stream.read())
    except OSError:
        # log.exception will include the traceback so we can see what's wrong 
        log.exception('Could not write to file')
        return make_response(("Not sure why,"
                              " but we couldn't write the file to disk", 500))

    total_chunks = int(request.form['dztotalchunkcount'])

    if current_chunk + 1 == total_chunks:
        # This was the last chunk, the file should be complete and the size we expect
        if os.path.getsize(save_path) != int(request.form['dztotalfilesize']):
            log.error(f"File {file.filename} was completed, "
                      f"but has a size mismatch."
                      f"Was {os.path.getsize(save_path)} but we"
                      f" expected {request.form['dztotalfilesize']} ")
            return make_response(('Size mismatch', 500))
        else:
            log.info(f'File {file.filename} has been uploaded successfully')
    else:
        log.debug(f'Chunk {current_chunk + 1} of {total_chunks} '
                  f'for file {file.filename} complete')

    return make_response(("Chunk upload successful", 200))