FileField.upload_to documentation misleading

[Markus Bertheau]

In ​https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/models/fields/#django.db.models.FileField.upload_to it says:

A local filesystem path that will be appended to your MEDIA_ROOT setting to determine the value of the url attribute.

While this may be true with the default storage, it's misleading because it suggests that this behaviour (append to MEDIA_ROOT to get the URL) can't be changed. It's also the first sentence and main explanation for upload_to, which increases the severity of the misleading.

In particular, you might want to make uploaded files not available to the general public, i.e. use a storage with base_url set to None. The first sentence sounds like you have to hack around django to implement that.

[Markus Bertheau]

Also, if what's in the first sentence is really the main purpose and way of functioning for upload_to, then upload_to is a misnomer.

[Tim Graham]

If you'd like to draft a patch, I'll be happy to review it.

[Matt Seymour]

Pull request added at github ​https://github.com/django/django/pull/4396

[Tim Graham <timograham@…>]

In 98c5370:

Fixed #24510 -- Clarified FileField.upload_to docs.