Question

I would like to create a custom field in django that models an ordinary text file editor but interacts with the the file system instead of the database.

For example:

class FileEditorField(models.TextField):
    #...

class Params(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=100)
    config = FileEditorField(path='/path')

FileEditor would read/save values from/to the file system.

What is the simplest approach?

Answer 1

Allright! This turned out to be easier than I thought. The idea was to create a new custom model field (docs) as follows:

class FileEditorField(models.TextField):

    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        self.path = kwargs.get('path', '/')
        if 'path' in kwargs: kwargs.pop('path')
        kwargs['null']=True
        kwargs['blank']=True
        return super(FileEditorField, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)

    def value_from_object(self, obj):
        return open(self.path).read()

    def save_form_data(self, instance, data):
        f = open(self.path, 'wb')
        f.write(data)