# File Uploads

**URL:** <https://forum.djangoproject.com/t/file-uploads/1572>\
**Category:** Using Django\
**Created:** [March 21, 2020, 9:16am UTC](https://forum.djangoproject.com/t/file-uploads/1572 "2020-03-21T09:16:14Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![hoenie-ams](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex026/user_avatar/forum.djangoproject.com/hoenie-ams/32/875_2.png) [@hoenie-ams](https://forum.djangoproject.com/u/hoenie-ams)\
**Post date:** [March 21, 2020, 9:16am UTC](https://forum.djangoproject.com/t/file-uploads/1572/1 "2020-03-21T09:16:14Z")

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Hi all! This is my first topic on this forum 🙂

I am currently working on building a portal where users can upload their documents. The files are only written to an external storage and should not be accessible. So for every upload, I do the following:

1. write file to external storage with an API Post call (Dropbox)
2. create a record in my own database with the filename & upload date

My code is as follows:

**Forms**

```
class UploadForm(forms.Form):
    file = forms.FileField(widget=forms.ClearableFileInput(attrs={'multiple': True}))`

```

**View (class based)**

```
def post(self, request, *args, **kwargs):
    form_class = self.get_form_class()
    form = self.get_form(form_class)
    files = request.FILES.getlist('file_field')
    if form.is_valid():
        for f in files:
            ... # write file to external storage with an API Post call
                 # create a record in my own database with the filename & upload date
        return self.form_valid(form)
    else:
        return self.form_invalid(form)

```

Currently the website is working fine, but I would like to make some improvements. Ideally I would like to use a model with a FileField, like this:

**Models**

```
class MyModel(models.Model):
    file = models.FileField(upload_to='uploads/')
    uploaded_at = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)

```

However, I am not sure how to set the `upload_to` variable. Because basically I don’t want to save the file at all. How do I implement file size limitations and extension validation? On the form level?

Or should I use [`Custom Storage`](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.0/howto/custom-file-storage/) or implement custom [`FILE_UPLOAD_HANDLERS`](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.0/ref/settings/#std:setting-FILE_UPLOAD_HANDLERS)?

Your help is very much appreciated!

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**Author:** ![adamchainz](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex026/user_avatar/forum.djangoproject.com/adamchainz/32/26_2.png) [@adamchainz](https://forum.djangoproject.com/u/adamchainz)\
**Post date:** [March 21, 2020, 9:47am UTC](https://forum.djangoproject.com/t/file-uploads/1572/2 "2020-03-21T09:47:18Z")

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Hi

It sounds like you want a custom storage. django-storages provides a dropbox backend: [https://django-storages.readthedocs.io/en/latest/backends/dropbox.html](https://django-storages.readthedocs.io/en/latest/backends/dropbox.html)

However if you have code working to copy the files to dropbox and want to do the minimum hccanges, you might be able to ignore `FileField` entirely. Instead you could just use a `CharField` to store the filename.

Thanks,

Adam

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![hoenie-ams](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex026/user_avatar/forum.djangoproject.com/hoenie-ams/32/875_2.png) [@hoenie-ams](https://forum.djangoproject.com/u/hoenie-ams)\
**Post date:** [March 23, 2020, 11:17am UTC](https://forum.djangoproject.com/t/file-uploads/1572/3 "2020-03-23T11:17:16Z")

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Thanks for your reply Adam. I decided to use a `CharField` and handle the validation myself, as I need a few other customisations. Django Storages is a great tip. Cheers!