I want users on the site to be able to download files whose paths are obscured so they cannot be directly downloaded.
For instance, I'd like the URL to be something like this: http://example.com/download/?f=somefile.txt
And on the server, I know that all downloadable files reside in the folder /home/user/files/.
Is there a way to make Django serve that file for download as opposed to trying to find a URL and View to display it?
For the "best of both worlds" you could combine S.Lott's solution with the xsendfile module: django generates the path to the file (or the file itself), but the actual file serving is handled by Apache/Lighttpd. Once you've set up mod_xsendfile, integrating with your view takes a few lines of code:
from django.utils.encoding import smart_str
response = HttpResponse(mimetype='application/force-download') # mimetype is replaced by content_type for django 1.7
response['Content-Disposition'] = 'attachment; filename=%s' % smart_str(file_name)
response['X-Sendfile'] = smart_str(path_to_file)
# It's usually a good idea to set the 'Content-Length' header too.
# You can also set any other required headers: Cache-Control, etc.
return response
Of course, this will only work if you have control over your server, or your hosting company has mod_xsendfile already set up.
EDIT:
mimetype is replaced by content_type for django 1.7
response = HttpResponse(content_type='application/force-download')
EDIT:
For nginx check this, it uses X-Accel-Redirect instead of apache X-Sendfile header.
A "download" is simply an HTTP header change.
See http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/request-response/#telling-the-browser-to-treat-the-response-as-a-file-attachment for how to respond with a download.
You only need one URL definition for "/download".
The request's GET or POST dictionary will have the "f=somefile.txt" information.
Your view function will simply merge the base path with the "f" value, open the file, create and return a response object. It should be less than 12 lines of code.
S.Lott has the "good"/simple solution, and elo80ka has the "best"/efficient solution. Here is a "better"/middle solution - no server setup, but more efficient for large files than the naive fix:
http://djangosnippets.org/snippets/365/
Basically, Django still handles serving the file but does not load the whole thing into memory at once. This allows your server to (slowly) serve a big file without ramping up the memory usage.
Again, S.Lott's X-SendFile is still better for larger files. But if you can't or don't want to bother with that, then this middle solution will gain you better efficiency without the hassle.
Django recommend that you use another server to serve static media (another server running on the same machine is fine.) They recommend the use of such servers as lighttp.
This is very simple to set up. However. if 'somefile.txt' is generated on request (content is dynamic) then you may want django to serve it.
I did a project on this. You can look at my github repo:
https://github.com/nishant-boro/django-rest-framework-download-expert
This module provides a simple way to serve files for download in django rest framework using Apache module Xsendfile. It also has an additional feature of serving downloads only to users belonging to a particular group