GridFS is a specification for storing and retrieving files that exceed the BSON-document size limit of 16 MB.

GridFSStorage backend for Djongo aims to add a GridFS storage to upload files to using Django’s file fields.

We first define our basic models. In the tutorials, we use the example used in the official Django documentation. The documentation talks about 3 models that interact with each other: Blog, Author and Entry. To make the example clearer, few fields from the original models are omitted.

## models.py
from djongo import models


class Blog(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=100)
    tagline = models.TextField()

    def __str__(self):
        return self.name

class Author(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=200)
    email = models.EmailField()
    avatar = models.ImageField(upload_to='authors')

    def __str__(self):
        return self.name

class Entry(models.Model):
    blog = models.ForeignKey(Blog, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
    headline = models.CharField(max_length=255)
    body_text = models.TextField()
    pub_date = models.DateField()
    mod_date = models.DateField()
    authors = models.ManyToManyField(Author)
    n_comments = models.IntegerField()
    n_pingbacks = models.IntegerField()
    rating = models.IntegerField()
    featured_image = models.ImageField(upload_to='entries')

    def __str__(self):
        return self.headline

GridFS Storage

The Author and Entry models define a field type ImageField. Until now, when you upload files, those files will be uploaded to MEDIA_ROOT/authors and MEDIA_ROOT/entries directories.

So, what happens if you want to save those files into database? That is when appears GridFS to the rescue!.

In your models.py file you could probably do:

## models.py
from django.conf import settings

# Add the import for GridFSStorage
from djongo.storage import GridFSStorage


# Define your GrifFSStorage instance 
grid_fs_storage = GridFSStorage(collection='myfiles', base_url=''.join([settings.BASE_URL, 'myfiles/']))

In Author change avatar field definition for this:

avatar = models.ImageField(upload_to='authors', storage=grid_fs_storage)

In Entry change avatar field definition for this:

featured_image = models.ImageField(upload_to='entries', storage=grid_fs_storage)

And, that’s all, when you upload avatar for Author it will be saved in collection myfiles.authors.files or when you upload featured_image for Entry it will be saved in collection myfiles.entries.files

Retriving values

Suppose that you have saved some documents in your collection related to Author model, so if you want to retrieve one of them, you could probably do:

# in a python console 
>>> author = Author.object.get(id=1)
>>> print(author)
{ 'id': 1, 'name': 'Lisa Stoner', 'email': 'lisa.stoner@nomail.local', 'avatar': 'http://mysite.local/myfiles/5dc880e06a8e6a7effa592a7'}

As you can see, the value that is retrieved in avatar field is the _id related to the saved image|file. In this case you get a url because you probably have in your settings file the following:

UPLOADED_FILES_USE_URL = True