Django Filewrapper memory error serving big files, how to stream

Question

I have code like this:

@login_required
def download_file(request):
    content_type = \"application/octet-stream\"
    download_name = os.path.join(DATA_ROOT         


        

Answer 1

Try to use StreamingHttpResponse instead, that will help, it is exactly what you are looking for.

Is it possible to configure it somehow to stream it the piece by piece from hard-drive without this insane memory storage?

import os
from django.http import StreamingHttpResponse
from django.core.servers.basehttp import FileWrapper #django <=1.8
from wsgiref.util import FileWrapper #django >1.8

@login_required
def download_file(request):
   file_path = os.path.join(DATA_ROOT, "video.avi")
   filename = os.path.basename(file_path)
   chunk_size = 8192
   response = StreamingHttpResponse(
       FileWrapper(open(file_path, 'rb'), chunk_size),
       content_type="application/octet-stream"
   )
   response['Content-Length'] = os.path.getsize(file_path)    
   response['Content-Disposition'] = "attachment; filename=%s" % filename
   return response

This will stream your file in chunks without loading it in memory; alternatively, you can use FileResponse,

which is a subclass of StreamingHttpResponse optimized for binary files.