[Solved]-Validating upload file type in Django

23👍

With Django 1.11 you can use FileExtensionValidator. With earlier versions, or for extra validation, you can build your own validator based on it. And you should probably create a validator either way because of this warning:

Don’t rely on validation of the file extension to determine a file’s type. Files can be renamed to have any extension no matter what data they contain.

Here’s a sample code with the existing validator:

from django.core.validators import FileExtensionValidator
class Post(models.Model):
    PDF = models.FileField(null=True, blank=True, validators=[FileExtensionValidator(['pdf'])])

Source code is also available so you can easily create your own:

https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.11/_modules/django/core/validators/#FileExtensionValidator

👤kichik

2👍

Think of validation in terms of:

  • Name/extension
  • Metadata (content type, size)
  • Actual content (is it really a PNG as the content-type says, or is it a malicious PDF?)

The first two are mostly cosmetic – pretty easy to spoof/fake that information. By adding content validation (via file magic – https://pypi.python.org/pypi/filemagic) you add a little bit of additional protection

Here is a good, related answer: Django: Validate file type of uploaded file It may be old, but the core idea should be easily adapted.

0👍

Firstly, I’d advise you change ‘PDF’ to ‘pdf’, then
to validate in older versions of Django, you could do this

forms.py

class PostForm(forms.ModelForm):
    # fields here
    class Meta:
        model = Post
        fields = ["title", "text", "pdf"]

    def clean(self):
        cd = self.cleaned_data
        pdf = cd.get('pdf', None)
        if pdf is not None:
            main, sub = pdf.content_type.split('/')
            # main here would most likely be application, as pdf mime type is application/pdf, 
            # but I'd like to be on a safer side should in case it returns octet-stream/pdf
            if not (main in ["application", "octet-stream"] and sub == "pdf"):
                raise forms.ValidationError(u'Please use a PDF file')
         return cd

0👍

Here is a simple example for a form with file type validation based on Django 1.11 FileExtensionValidator

class ImageForm(ModelForm):
    ALLOWED_TYPES = ['jpg', 'jpeg', 'png', 'gif']

    class Meta:
        model = Profile
        fields = ['image', ]

    def clean_avatar(self):
        image = self.cleaned_data.get('image', None)
        if not avatar:
            raise forms.ValidationError('Missing image file')
        try:
            extension = os.path.splitext(image.name)[1][1:].lower()
            if extension in self.ALLOWED_TYPES:
                return avatar
            else:
                raise forms.ValidationError('File types is not allowed')
        except Exception as e:
            raise forms.ValidationError('Can not identify file type')
👤Rani

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