Question

I have a model like this:

class Item(models.Model):
    code = models.CharField(max_length=200, unique=True)
    barcode = models.CharField(max_length=300)
    desc = models.CharField('Description',max_length=500)
    display_desc = models.CharField('Description',max_length=500,
                                    blank=True, null=True)
    price = models.FloatField()
    discountable = models.BooleanField(blank=True, default=False)
    image_path = models.CharField(max_length=300,unique=True, blank=True, null=True)    

    def __unicode__(self):
        return self.code + ' : ' + self.desc

But unfortunately, I don’t want to store the item’s image in the database, instead I want to store the image path in the server in the image_path column.

So, I created a custom admin.py for this object so that I could edit/insert the object thru the Django admin module. As a result, below is the customized admin.py

class ItemAdminForm(forms.ModelForm):
    file_upload = forms.FileField(required=False)

    class Meta:
        model = Item

    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super(ItemAdminForm, self).__init__(*args,**kwargs)

        #if kwargs.has_key('instance'):
        #    instance = kwargs['instance']
        #    self.initial['file_upload'] = instance.file_upload

    def handle_uploaded_file(f):
        destination = open('D:/Project/pensel/penselshop/static/picture', 'wb+')
        for chunk in f.chunks():
            destination.write(chunk)
        destination.close()
        return f.name

    def save(self,commit=True):
        name = None
        extension = None
        #error here! How could I get the request?
        miniform = ItemAdminForm(request.POST, request.FILES)
        if miniform.is_valid():
            name = handle_uploaded_file(request.FILES['file_upload'])    
            extension = name.split('.')[1]
        model = super(ItemAdminForm, self).save(commit=False)
        model.image_path = '/static/picture/' + model.code + extension        

        if commit:
            model.save()

        return model

However, during processing the save() function, I noticed that there is an error in getting the request. How can I get the request so that I could retrieve the file? I noticed that the request is automatically added in views.py, but not admin.py

Answer 1

Django’s ImageField and FileField fields don’t actually store the image in the database either. All that is stored in the database is the path, which you can control yourself. The actual image file is stored on the filesystem. So I’m not sure why you are going to all this trouble…?

But to answer your question of how to get the request in the admin, you can override ModelAdmin.save_model().