Is it possible to add files to request.FILES

Using Django
1

I have a form that has an image select input and a text input, the latter expects a URL with an image.

I would like to upload both the image from the ImageField and the image from the URL.

I have got as far as completing various checks on the URL, and initialising a variable imgfile with the file data that has the type _io.BytesIO, and imgname that has the type str.

When I test what is in request.FILES (from the form’s ImageField) I see this:

print(type(self.request.FILES)
-> <class 'django.utils.datastructures.MultiValueDict'>

print(dict(self.request.FILES)
-> {'image_set-0-file': [<InMemoryUploadedFile: icons0.1.gif (image/gif)>]}

Then I add an element to self.request.FILES:

self.request.FILES['imgurl'] = InMemoryUploadedFile

print(dict(self.request.FILES)
-> {'image_set-0-file': [<InMemoryUploadedFile: icons0.1.gif (image/gif)>], 'imgurl': [<class 'django.core.files.uploadedfile.InMemoryUploadedFile'>]}

So, at this point I am thinking that the imgurl dict element is not right, but I soldier on:

self.request.FILES['imgurl'].name = 'hello.png'

print(dict(self.request.FILES)
-> {'image_set-0-file': [<InMemoryUploadedFile: hello.png (image/gif)>], 'imgurl': [<class 'django.core.files.uploadedfile.InMemoryUploadedFile'>]}

Now it’s obvious that this is not working, because self.request.FILES['image_set-0-file'].name has changed rather than self.request.FILES['imgurl'].name.

Is this just fundamentally the wrong technique, or have I made a minor (or major) coding error?

Thanks

2

Personally, I would try to avoid modifying request.FILES and instead supply the additional image to whatever is consuming request.FILES.

3

The first strategy was to write the file and the database reference directly. But I found that the roadblock there was that I didn’t have the foreign key necessary for the database write.

The second strategy was to try to understand how other files were uploaded/referenced and piggyback on that process. Which leads to trying to manipulate request.FILES. The problem here is laid out in my initial post.

So, I think it is probable that I need to dive down further into the code and, as you note, work out what request.FILES is being fed to. Initially I thought I’d run into a problem of getting my file data down to that process - but I think that wont necessarily be a problem, because my file data is derived from a field in request.DATA, which is presumably being managed somewhere down the line with request.FILES.

Probably your direction (the third way) will prove more fruitful. Thanks.