[Solved]-Django: Save user uploads in seperate folders

1. I don’t recommend you to use user email or any other information that can be updated as folder name because you won’t change folder name each time he changes his email or his username. So, use user id that is unique and unchangeable.

2. Here is a complete example from Django documentation, to access instance information in your models to build path with user id :

def user_directory_path(instance, filename):
    # file will be uploaded to MEDIA_ROOT/user_<id>/<filename>
    return 'user_{0}/{1}'.format(instance.user.id, filename)

class MyModel(models.Model):
    upload = models.FileField(upload_to=user_directory_path)

In this case, it use the user id in the folder name. Of course, your can replaceFileField with ImageField.

More information in django docs : FileFields.upload_to

You could maybe separate the folder by their username? You can create a function that would create a folder using the users username like so:

def get_user_image_folder(instance, filename):
    return "%s/%s" %(instance.user.username, filename)

and in your model you could easily use the upload_to and add the function that you just created to it:

class Images(models.Model):
   user = models.ForeignKey(User)
   image = models.ImageField(upload_to=get_user_image_folder,
                                  verbose_name='Image', )

You don’t have to use request in Models, you use instance instead.

To get this to work I implemented the solution from the docs as suggested by Louis Barranqueiro, whereby the models looks like:

# models.py
def user_directory_path(instance, filename):
    return 'user_{0}/{1}'.format(instance.user.id, filename)

class Document(models.Model):
    file = models.FileField(upload_to=user_directory_path)
    uploaded_at = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)
    user = models.ForeignKey(settings.AUTH_USER_MODEL, related_name='documents')

But crucially, I also changed my DocumentUploadView class to include a save step, so that the document saves with the user attribute (note also the initial commit=False save step, which is crucial):

# views.py
class DocumentUploadView(View):

    def get(self, request):
        documents_list = Document.objects.all()
        return render(self.request, 'file_upload.html', {'documents': documents_list})

    def post(self, request):
        form = DocumentForm(self.request.POST, self.request.FILES)
        if form.is_valid():
            document = form.save(commit=False)
            document.user = request.user
            document.save()
            data = {'is_valid': True, 'name': document.file.name, 'url': document.file.url}
        else:
            data = {'is_valid': False}
        return JsonResponse(data)

Finally my forms.py looks like this:

# forms.py
class DocumentForm(forms.ModelForm):
    class Meta:
        model = Document
    fields = ('file',)

For anyone else in the future that stumble across this, I got access to the current user’s ID by adding the user object to the model in the view.

views.py

from .models import Document

if request.method == 'POST':
    form = DocumentForm(request.POST, request.FILES)
    if form.is_valid():
        newdoc = Document(docfile=request.FILES['docfile'])
        newdoc.owner = request.user
        newdoc.save()

Then, in models.py you can retrieve the ID from owner created previously in view.

def user_directory_path(instance, filename):
    return 'Users/user_{0}/{1}'.format(instance.owner.id, filename)


class Document(models.Model):
    docfile = models.FileField(upload_to=user_directory_path)

In your views.py you must pass the instance argument like this:

def post(self, request, *args, **kwargs):
    if 'uploadFile' in request.POST:
        f = UploadFileForm(request.POST, request.FILES, instance=request.user.uploadmodel)
        if f.is_valid():
            f.save()
            return HttpResponseRedirect('/sucess_url')

And your forms.py

from django import forms

from .models import UploadForm


class UploadFileForm(forms.ModelForm):
    class Meta:
        model = UploadForm
        fields = ('file',)

I also faced the same problem. Here is how I solved it. We have to create the user referencing in the view.

Below is the code for models.py

def user_directory_path(instance, filename):
    # file will be uploaded to MEDIA_ROOT/user_<id>/<filename>
    return 'user_{0}/{1}'.format(instance.user.id, filename)

class Document(models.Model):
    user = models.ForeignKey(settings.AUTH_USER_MODEL,on_delete=models.CASCADE)
    docfile = models.FileField(upload_to=user_directory_path)
    date = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True, blank=True)

Also update the code in views.py as below:

def upload(request):
    # Handle file upload
    if request.method == 'POST':
        form = DocumentForm(request.POST, request.FILES)
        if form.is_valid():
            newdoc = Document(docfile=request.FILES['docfile'],user=request.user)
            newdoc.save()
            latest_documents = Document.objects.all().order_by('-id')[0]

            # Redirect to the document list after POST
            return HttpResponseRedirect(reverse('list'))
    else:
        form = DocumentForm()  # A empty, unbound form

    # Load documents for the list page
    documents = Document.objects.filter(user=request.user)

The most important one is in the line,

newdoc = Document(docfile=request.FILES['docfile'],user=request.user)

Somehow I could not get the model instance to read the user. This approach is working for me.