django templates upload file - how to handle a non-existant physical file

Question

I am using django to upload an image file to the server.

When the user attempts to view a missing image in the django templates, there is just the broken image displayed, but I want to display a default missing image file.

How do I handle the possibility of the physical file being deleted (or just missing) but the location still stored in the database?

Answer 1

Use the exists() method of the file storage. For example if the name of the image field is image the code will look like:

if obj.image.storage.exists(obj.image.name):
    ...

To simplify things you can create a custom template filter:

from django.conf import settings

@register.filter
def default_image(image, default_file):
    if image.storage.exists(image.name):
        return image.url
    return settings.STATIC_URL + default_file

And then use it right in the template:

<img src="{{ obj.image|default_image:'no-image.png' }}" />