Shiva Basnet

Shiva Basnet

Software Engineer - Data

How to Upload Files to AWS S3 using the Django Rest Framework?

1 minute read

Cover Page

Dependencies

We will need two python libraries.

Boto3
django-storages

In order to install the dependency package run the command below:

pip install boto3
pip install django-storages

Now include storages on INSTALLED_APPS inside the settings.py

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    'django.contrib.admin',
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',
    'Django.contrib.gis',
    ‘storages’
]

Create a new python file storage_backends.py (if you want a different name it’s completely fine). You can place it anywhere but i recommend placing it at the level of settings.py.

storage_backends.py

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18

from django.conf import settings
from storages.backends.s3boto3 import S3Boto3Storage

# class for static files
class StaticS3Storage(S3Boto3Storage):
    location = settings.AWS_STATIC_LOCATION

# class for public media
class PublicMediaS3Storage(S3Boto3Storage):
    location = settings.AWS_PUBLIC_MEDIA_LOCATION
    file_overwrite = False

# class for private media
class PrivateMediaS3Storage(S3Boto3Storage):
    location = settings.AWS_PRIVATE_MEDIA_LOCATION
    default_acl = 'private'
    file_overwrite = False
    custom_domain = False

The public media and static files can be accessd by anyone with links or urls but private media is protected and cannot be accessed with url only. Trying to access private media without credential will result into “Access Denied” error. You can keep the media private or public according to your project needs.

env.py

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20

AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID = '****************'
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY = '************************'
AWS_STORAGE_BUCKET_NAME = '**********************'
AWS_S3_CUSTOM_DOMAIN = '%s.s3.amazonaws.com' % AWS_STORAGE_BUCKET_NAME

AWS_S3_OBJECT_PARAMETERS = {
    'CacheControl': 'max-age=86400',
}


AWS_STATIC_LOCATION = 'static'
STATICFILES_STORAGE = 'mysite.storage_backends.StaticStorages3'
STATIC_URL = "https://%s/%s/" % (AWS_S3_CUSTOM_DOMAIN, AWS_STATIC_LOCATION)


AWS_PUBLIC_MEDIA_LOCATION = 'media/public'
DEFAULT_FILE_STORAGE = 'myapp.storage_backends.PublicMediaS3Storage'

AWS_PRIVATE_MEDIA_LOCATION = 'media/private'
PRIVATE_FILE_STORAGE = 'myapp.storage_backends.PrivateMediaS3Storage'

The credential AWS ACCESS KEY ID, AWS SECRET ACCESS KEY and AWS STORAGE BUCKET NAME should be obtained from AWS.

Now run the command “python manage.py collectstatic”. It will collect our static files to remote location as per our new settings. And from now, static and media files will be served from AWS S3.

<—————————- Happy Coding —————————->

Leave a comment

You may also enjoy