django-downloadview/docs/about/alternatives.txt

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Alternatives and related projects
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This document presents other projects that provide similar or complementary
functionalities. It focuses on differences with django-downloadview.
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Django's static file view
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`Django has a builtin static file view`_. It can stream files. As explained in
Django documentation, it is designed for development purposes. For production,
static files'd better be served by some optimized server.
Django-downloadview can replace Django's builtin static file view:
* perform actions with Django when receiving download requests: check
permissions, generate files, gzip, logging, signals...
* delegate actual download to a reverse proxy for increased performance.
* disable optimization middlewares or decorators in development, if you want to
serve files with Django.
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django-sendfile
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`django-sendfile`_ is a wrapper around web-server specific methods for sending
files to web clients.
``django-senfile``'s main focus is simplicity: API is made of a single
``sendfile()`` function you call inside your views:
.. code:: python
from sendfile import sendfile
def hello_world(request):
"""Send 'hello-world.pdf' file as a response."""
return sendfile(request, '/path/to/hello-world.pdf')
The download response type depends on the chosen backend, which could
be Django, Lighttpd's X-Sendfile, Nginx's X-Accel... depending your settings:
.. code:: python
SENDFILE_BACKEND = 'sendfile.backends.nginx' # sendfile() will return
# X-Accel responses.
# Additional settings for sendfile's nginx backend.
SENDFILE_ROOT = '/path/to'
SENDFILE_URL = '/proxied-download'
Here are main differences between the two projects:
* ``django-sendfile`` supports only files that live on local filesystem (i.e.
where ``os.path.exists`` returns ``True``). Whereas ``django-downloadview``
allows you to serve or proxy files stored in various locations, including
remote ones.
* ``django-sendfile`` uses a single global configuration (i.e.
``settings.SENDFILE_ROOT``), thus optimizations are limited to a single
root folder. Whereas ``django-downloadview``'s
``DownloadDispatcherMiddleware`` supports multiple configurations.
As of 2012-04-11, ``django-sendfile`` (version 0.3.2) seems quite popular and
may be a good alternative **provided you serve files that live in a single
directory of local filesystem**.
:func:`django_downloadview.sendfile` is a port of django-sendfile's main function.
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django-private-files
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`django-private-files`_ provides utilities for controlling access to static
files based on conditions you can specify within your Django application.
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django-protected-files
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`django-protected-files`_ is a Django application that lets you serve protected
static files via your frontend server after authorizing the user against
``django.contrib.auth``.
As of 2012-12-10, this project seems inactive.
.. rubric:: References
.. target-notes::
.. _`Django has a builtin static file view`:
https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.4/ref/contrib/staticfiles/#static-file-development-view
.. _`django-sendfile`: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/django-sendfile
.. _`requests`: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/requests
.. _`django-private-files`: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/django-private-files
.. _`django-protected-files`:
https://github.com/lincolnloop/django-protected-files