Django File upload size limit

I have a form in my django app where users can upload files.
How can i set a limit to the uploaded file size so that if a user uploads a file larger than my limit the form won't be valid and it will throw an error?

You can use this snippet formatChecker. What it does is

• it lets you specify what file formats are allowed to be uploaded.

• and lets you set the limit of file size of the file to be uploaded.

First. Create a file named formatChecker.py inside the app where the you have the model that has the FileField that you want to accept a certain file type.

This is your formatChecker.py:

from django.db.models import FileField
from django.forms import forms
from django.template.defaultfilters import filesizeformat
from django.utils.translation import ugettext_lazy as _

class ContentTypeRestrictedFileField(FileField):
    """
    Same as FileField, but you can specify:
        * content_types - list containing allowed content_types. Example: ['application/pdf', 'image/jpeg']
        * max_upload_size - a number indicating the maximum file size allowed for upload.
            2.5MB - 2621440
            5MB - 5242880
            10MB - 10485760
            20MB - 20971520
            50MB - 5242880
            100MB - 104857600
            250MB - 214958080
            500MB - 429916160
    """
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        self.content_types = kwargs.pop("content_types", [])
        self.max_upload_size = kwargs.pop("max_upload_size", 0)

        super(ContentTypeRestrictedFileField, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)

    def clean(self, *args, **kwargs):
        data = super(ContentTypeRestrictedFileField, self).clean(*args, **kwargs)

        file = data.file
        try:
            content_type = file.content_type
            if content_type in self.content_types:
                if file._size > self.max_upload_size:
                    raise forms.ValidationError(_('Please keep filesize under %s. Current filesize %s') % (filesizeformat(self.max_upload_size), filesizeformat(file._size)))
            else:
                raise forms.ValidationError(_('Filetype not supported.'))
        except AttributeError:
            pass

        return data

Second. In your models.py, add this:

from formatChecker import ContentTypeRestrictedFileField

Then instead of using 'FileField', use this 'ContentTypeRestrictedFileField'.

Example:

class Stuff(models.Model):
    title = models.CharField(max_length=245)
    handout = ContentTypeRestrictedFileField(upload_to='uploads/', content_types=['video/x-msvideo', 'application/pdf', 'video/mp4', 'audio/mpeg', ],max_upload_size=5242880,blank=True, null=True)

You can change the value of 'max_upload_size' to the limit of file size that you want. You can also change the values inside the list of 'content_types' to the file types that you want to accept.

another solution is using validators

from django.core.exceptions import ValidationError

def file_size(value): # add this to some file where you can import it from
    limit = 2 * 1024 * 1024
    if value.size > limit:
        raise ValidationError('File too large. Size should not exceed 2 MiB.')

then in your form with the File field you have something like this

image = forms.FileField(required=False, validators=[file_size])

This code might help:

# Add to your settings file
CONTENT_TYPES = ['image', 'video']
# 2.5MB - 2621440
# 5MB - 5242880
# 10MB - 10485760
# 20MB - 20971520
# 50MB - 5242880
# 100MB 104857600
# 250MB - 214958080
# 500MB - 429916160
MAX_UPLOAD_SIZE = "5242880"

#Add to a form containing a FileField and change the field names accordingly.
from django.template.defaultfilters import filesizeformat
from django.utils.translation import ugettext_lazy as _
from django.conf import settings
def clean_content(self):
    content = self.cleaned_data['content']
    content_type = content.content_type.split('/')[0]
    if content_type in settings.CONTENT_TYPES:
        if content._size > settings.MAX_UPLOAD_SIZE:
            raise forms.ValidationError(_('Please keep filesize under %s. Current filesize %s') % (filesizeformat(settings.MAX_UPLOAD_SIZE), filesizeformat(content._size)))
    else:
        raise forms.ValidationError(_('File type is not supported'))
    return content

Taken from: Django Snippets - Validate by file content type and size

I believe that django form receives file only after it was uploaded completely.That's why if somebody uploads 2Gb file, you're much better off with web-server checking for size on-the-fly.

See this mail thread for more info.

Server side

My favourite method of checking whether a file is too big server-side is ifedapo olarewaju's answer using a validator.

Client side

The problem with only having server-side validation is that the validation only happens after the upload is complete. Imagine, uploading a huge file, waiting for ages, only to be told afterwards that the file is too big. Wouldn't it be nicer if the browser could let me know beforehand that the file is too big?

Well, there is a way to this client side, using HTML5 File API!

Here's the required Javascript (depending on JQuery):

$("form").submit(function() {
  if (window.File && window.FileReader && window.FileList && window.Blob) {
    var file = $('#id_file')[0].files[0];
    
    if (file && file.size > 2 * 1024 * 1024) {
      alert("File " + file.name + " of type " + file.type + " is too big");
      return false;
    }
  }
});

Of course, you still need server-side validation, to protect against malicious input, and users that don't have Javascript enabled.

Just a short note on the snippet that was included in this thread:

> Take a look at this snippet: > http://www.djangosnippets.org/snippets/1303/

It was very usefull, however it's including a few minor mistakes. More robust code should look like this:

# Add to your settings file
CONTENT_TYPES = ['image', 'video']
# 2.5MB - 2621440
# 5MB - 5242880
# 10MB - 10485760
# 20MB - 20971520
# 50MB - 5242880
# 100MB - 104857600
# 250MB - 214958080
# 500MB - 429916160
MAX_UPLOAD_SIZE = "5242880"

#Add to a form containing a FileField and change the field names accordingly.
from django.template.defaultfilters import filesizeformat
from django.utils.translation import ugettext_lazy as _
from django.conf import settings
def clean_content(self):
    if content != None:
        content = self.cleaned_data['content']
        content_type = content.content_type.split('/')[0]
        if content_type in settings.CONTENT_TYPES:
            if content._size > int(settings.MAX_UPLOAD_SIZE):
                raise forms.ValidationError(_(u'Please keep filesize under %s. Current filesize %s') % (filesizeformat(settings.MAX_UPLOAD_SIZE), filesizeformat(content._size)))
        else:
            raise forms.ValidationError(_(u'File type is not supported'))
        return content

There are just a few improvements:

First of all I'm detecting if the file field is empty (None) - without it, Django will cast an exception in web browser.

Next is type casting in int(settings.MAX_UPLOAD_SIZE), because that setting value is a string. Strings cannot be used for comparing with numbers.

Last but not least, the unicode 'u' prefix in ValidationError function.

Thank you very much for this snippet!

If someone is looking for a form FileField variant of @angelo solution then here it is

from django import forms
from django.template.defaultfilters import filesizeformat
from django.utils.translation import ugettext_lazy as _
from django.core.exceptions import ValidationError

class RestrictedFileField(forms.FileField):
    """
    Same as FileField, but you can specify:
    * content_types - list containing allowed content_types. Example: ['application/pdf', 'image/jpeg']
    * max_upload_size - a number indicating the maximum file size allowed for upload.
        2.5MB - 2621440
        5MB - 5242880
        10MB - 10485760
        20MB - 20971520
        50MB - 5242880
        100MB - 104857600
        250MB - 214958080
        500MB - 429916160
"""

    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        self.content_types = kwargs.pop("content_types")
        self.max_upload_size = kwargs.pop("max_upload_size")

        super(RestrictedFileField, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)

    def clean(self, data, initial=None):
        file = super(RestrictedFileField, self).clean(data, initial)

        try:
            content_type = file.content_type
            if content_type in self.content_types:
                if file._size > self.max_upload_size:
                    raise ValidationError(_('Please keep filesize under %s. Current filesize %s') % (
                        filesizeformat(self.max_upload_size), filesizeformat(file._size)))
            else:
                raise ValidationError(_('Filetype not supported.'))
        except AttributeError:
            pass

        return data

Then create a form as

class ImageUploadForm(forms.Form):
    """Image upload form."""
    db_image = RestrictedFileField(content_types=['image/png', 'image/jpeg'],
                                   max_upload_size=5242880)

In my case, django limit the upload file size. Add the following settings will remove restriction.

# allow upload big file
DATA_UPLOAD_MAX_MEMORY_SIZE = 1024 * 1024 * 15  # 15M
FILE_UPLOAD_MAX_MEMORY_SIZE = DATA_UPLOAD_MAX_MEMORY_SIZE

I want to thank all the folks who have provided various different solutions to this problem. I had additional requirements where I wanted to (a) do file length validation in JavaScript before submission, (b) do a second line of defense in-server validation in the forms.py, (c) keep all hard-coded bits including end-user messages in forms.py, (d) I wanted my views.py have as little file-related code as possible, and (d) upload the file information to my database since these are small files that I want to only serve to logged in users and instantly delete when the Meal model items are deleted (i.e. so just dropping them in /media/ is not sufficient).

First the model:

class Meal(models.Model) :
    title = models.CharField(max_length=200)
    text = models.TextField()

    # Picture (you need content type to serve it properly)
    picture = models.BinaryField(null=True, editable=True)
    content_type = models.CharField(max_length=256, null=True, help_text='The MIMEType of the file')

    # Shows up in the admin list
    def __str__(self):
        return self.title

Then you need a form that both does the in-server validation and the pre-save conversion from InMemoryUploadedFile to bytes and grabbing the Content-Type for later serving.

class CreateForm(forms.ModelForm):
    max_upload_limit = 2 * 1024 * 1024
    max_upload_limit_text = str(max_upload_limit) # A more natural size would be nice
    upload_field_name = 'picture'
    # Call this 'picture' so it gets copied from the form to the in-memory model
    picture = forms.FileField(required=False, label='File to Upload <= '+max_upload_limit_text)

    class Meta:
        model = Meal
        fields = ['title', 'text', 'picture']

    def clean(self) :  # Reject if the file is too large
        cleaned_data = super().clean()
        pic = cleaned_data.get('picture')
        if pic is None : return
        if len(pic) > self.max_upload_limit:
            self.add_error('picture', "File must be < "+self.max_upload_limit_text+" bytes")

    def save(self, commit=True) : # Convert uploaded files to bytes
        instance = super(CreateForm, self).save(commit=False)
        f = instance.picture   # Make a copy
        if isinstance(f, InMemoryUploadedFile):
            bytearr = f.read();
            instance.content_type = f.content_type
            instance.picture = bytearr  # Overwrite with the actual image data

        if commit:
            instance.save()
        return instance

In the template, add this code (adapted from a previous answer):

<script>
$("#upload_form").submit(function() {
  if (window.File && window.FileReader && window.FileList && window.Blob) {
      var file = $('#id_{{ form.upload_field_name }}')[0].files[0];
      if (file && file.size > {{ form.max_upload_limit }} ) {
          alert("File " + file.name + " of type " + file.type + " must be < {{ form.max_upload_limit_text }}");
      return false;
    }
  }
});
</script>

Here is the view code that handles both Create and Update:

class MealFormView(LoginRequiredMixin, View):
    template = 'meal_form.html'
    success_url = reverse_lazy('meals')
    def get(self, request, pk=None) :
        if not pk :
            form = CreateForm()
        else:
            meal = get_object_or_404(Meal, id=pk, owner=self.request.user)
            form = CreateForm(instance=meal)
        ctx = { 'form': form }
        return render(request, self.template, ctx)

    def post(self, request, pk=None) :
        if not pk:
            form = CreateForm(request.POST, request.FILES or None)
        else:
            meal = get_object_or_404(Meal, id=pk, owner=self.request.user)
            form = CreateForm(request.POST, request.FILES or None, instance=meal)

        if not form.is_valid() :
            ctx = {'form' : form}
            return render(request, self.template, ctx)

        form.save()
        return redirect(self.success_url)

This is a very simple view that makes sure that request.FILES is passed in during the creation of the instance. You could almost use the generic CreateView if it would (a) use my form and (b) pass request.files when making the model instance.

Just to complete the effort, I have the following simple view to stream the file:

def stream_file(request, pk) :
    meal = get_object_or_404(Meal, id=pk)
    response = HttpResponse()
    response['Content-Type'] = meal.content_type
    response['Content-Length'] = len(meal.picture)
    response.write(meal.picture)
    return response

This does not force users to be logged in, but I omitted that since this answer is already too long.

Another elegant solution with validators that does not hard-code the max file size is by using a class based validator:

from django.core.exceptions import ValidationError
from django.core.validators import MaxValueValidator
from django.utils.translation import ugettext as _

class MaxSizeValidator(MaxValueValidator):
message = _('The file exceed the maximum size of %(limit_value)s MB.')

def __call__(self, value):
    # get the file size as cleaned value
    cleaned = self.clean(value.size)
    params = {'limit_value': self.limit_value, 'show_value': cleaned, 'value': value}
    if self.compare(cleaned, self.limit_value * 1024 * 1024): # convert limit_value from MB to Bytes
        raise ValidationError(self.message, code=self.code, params=params)

and then, in your model, for example:

image = models.ImageField(verbose_name='Image', upload_to='images/', validators=[MaxSizeValidator(1)])

EDIT: here is the source code of MaxValueValidator for more details on this works.

You can extend Django's MaxValueValidator and overwrite it's clean() to return the file size:

from django.core.validators import MaxValueValidator
from django.utils.deconstruct import deconstructible
from django.utils.translation import ugettext_lazy as _


@deconstructible
class MaxKibFileSizeValidator(MaxValueValidator):
    message = _('File size %(show_value)d KiB exceeds maximum file size of %(limit_value)d KiB.')

    def clean(self, filefield) -> float:
        return filefield.file.size / 1024

from django.forms.utils import ErrorList

class Mymodelform(forms.ModelForm):
    class Meta:
        model = Mymodel
        fields = '__all__'

    def clean(self):image = self.cleaned_data.get('image')
        # 5MB - 5242880
        if org_image._size > 5242880:            
            self._errors["image"] = ErrorList([u"Image too heavy."])