Media files should be served using file storage API

[Mitar]

Currently static and media files using django.views.static.serve directly access given path for serving files, for example settings.MEDIA_ROOT. Much better would be that it would use storage API, so it could be used to serve in development also files from other storage classes, if Django is defined as such.

One such serve function I wrote:

def serve(request, path):
    """
    Serve files from default storage.
    """

    if not settings.DEBUG:
        raise exceptions.ImproperlyConfigured("The view can only be used in debug mode.")
    normalized_path = posixpath.normpath(urllib.unquote(path)).lstrip('/')

    if not storage.default_storage.exists(normalized_path):
        if path.endswith('/') or path == '':
            raise http.Http404("Directory indexes are not allowed here.")
        raise http.Http404("'%s' could not be found" % path)

    try:
        mimetype = storage.default_storage.mimetype(normalized_path) or 'application/octet-stream'
    except (NotImplementedError, AttributeError):
        mimetype = 'application/octet-stream'

    try:
        modified_time = time.mktime(storage.default_storage.modified_time(normalized_path).timetuple())
    except (NotImplementedError, AttributeError):
        modified_time = None

    size = storage.default_storage.size(normalized_path)

    if modified_time is not None and not static.was_modified_since(request.META.get('HTTP_IF_MODIFIED_SINCE'), modified_time, size):
        return http.HttpResponseNotModified(mimetype=mimetype)

    f = storage.default_storage.open(normalized_path, 'rb')
    try:
        response = http.HttpResponse(f.read(), mimetype=mimetype)
    finally:
        f.close()

    response['Content-Length'] = size

    if modified_time is not None:
        response['Last-Modified'] = http_utils.http_date(modified_time)

    return response  

[Aymeric Augustin]

For static files:

• it's already done when django.contrib.staticfiles is enabled
• I don't see how it would be possible when it isn't: static files are just whatever's under STATIC_ROOT

For media files:

• it could be a good idea.

I'm restricting the scope of this ticket to media files, please provide a patch so we can better evaluate your idea.