Google Cloud Storage

This backend provides Django File API for Google Cloud Storage using the Python library provided by Google.

Installation

Use pip to install from PyPI:

pip install django-storages[google]

Configuration & Settings

Django 4.2 changed the way file storage objects are configured. In particular, it made it easier to independently configure storage backends and add additional ones. To configure multiple storage objects pre Django 4.2 required subclassing the backend because the settings were global, now you pass them under the key OPTIONS. For example, to save media files to GCS on Django >= 4.2 you’d define:

STORAGES = {
    "default": {
        "BACKEND": "storages.backends.gcloud.GoogleCloudStorage",
        "OPTIONS": {
          ...your_options_here
        },
    },
}

On Django < 4.2 you’d instead define:

DEFAULT_FILE_STORAGE = "storages.backends.gcloud.GoogleCloudStorage"

To put static files on GCS via collectstatic on Django >= 4.2 you’d include the staticfiles key (at the same level as default) in the STORAGES dictionary while on Django < 4.2 you’d instead define:

STATICFILES_STORAGE = "storages.backends.gcloud.GoogleCloudStorage"

The settings documented in the following sections include both the key for OPTIONS (and subclassing) as well as the global value. Given the significant improvements provided by the new API, migration is strongly encouraged.

Authentication Settings

By default, this library will try to use the credentials associated with the current Google Cloud infrastructure/environment for authentication.

In most cases, the default service accounts are not sufficient to read/write and sign files in GCS, so you will need to create a dedicated service account:

  1. Create a service account. (Google Getting Started Guide)

  2. Make sure your service account has access to the bucket and appropriate permissions. (Using IAM Permissions)

  3. Ensure this service account is associated to the type of compute being used (Google Compute Engine (GCE), Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), Google Cloud Run (GCR), etc)

For development use cases, or other instances outside Google infrastructure:

  1. Create the key and download your-project-XXXXX.json file.

  2. Ensure the key is mounted/available to your running Django app.

  3. Set an environment variable of GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS to the path of the json file.

Alternatively, you can use the setting credentials or GS_CREDENTIALS as described below.

Settings

bucket_name or GS_BUCKET_NAME

Required

The name of the GCS bucket that will host the files.

project_id or GS_PROJECT_ID

default: None

Your Google Cloud project ID. If unset, falls back to the default inferred from the environment.

gzip or GS_IS_GZIPPED

default: False

Whether or not to enable gzipping of content types specified by gzip_content_types.

gzip_content_types or GZIP_CONTENT_TYPES

default: (text/css,text/javascript,application/javascript,application/x-javascript,image/svg+xml)

The list of content types to be gzipped when gzip is True.

credentials or GS_CREDENTIALS

default: None

The OAuth 2 credentials to use for the connection. If unset, falls back to the default inferred from the environment (i.e. GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS):

from google.oauth2 import service_account

GS_CREDENTIALS = service_account.Credentials.from_service_account_file(
    "path/to/credentials.json"
)

default_acl or GS_DEFAULT_ACL

default: None

ACL used when creating a new blob, from the list of predefined ACLs. (A “JSON API” ACL is preferred but an “XML API/gsutil” ACL will be translated.)

For most cases, the blob will need to be set to the publicRead ACL in order for the file to be viewed. If default_acl is not set, the blob will have the default permissions set by the bucket.

publicRead files will return a public, non-expiring url. All other files return a signed (expiring) url.

Note

GS_DEFAULT_ACL must be set to ‘publicRead’ to return a public url. Even if you set the bucket to public or set the file permissions directly in GCS to public.

Note

When using this setting, make sure you have fine-grained access control enabled on your bucket, as opposed to Uniform access control, or else, file uploads will return with HTTP 400. If you already have a bucket with Uniform access control set to public read, please keep GS_DEFAULT_ACL to None and set GS_QUERYSTRING_AUTH to False.

querystring_auth or GS_QUERYSTRING_AUTH

default: True

If set to False it forces the url not to be signed. This setting is useful if you need to have a bucket configured with Uniform access control configured with public read. In that case you should force the flag GS_QUERYSTRING_AUTH = False and GS_DEFAULT_ACL = None

file_overwrite or GS_FILE_OVERWRITE

default: True

By default files with the same name will overwrite each other. Set this to False to have extra characters appended.

max_memory_size or GS_MAX_MEMORY_SIZE

default: 0 i.e do not rollover

The maximum amount of memory a returned file can take up (in bytes) before being rolled over into a temporary file on disk. Default is 0: Do not roll over.

blob_chunk_size or GS_BLOB_CHUNK_SIZE

default: None

The size of blob chunks that are sent via resumable upload. If this is not set then the generated request must fit in memory. Recommended if you are going to be uploading large files.

Note

This must be a multiple of 256K (1024 * 256)

object_parameters or GS_OBJECT_PARAMETERS

default: {}

Dictionary of key-value pairs mapping from blob property name to value.

Use this to set parameters on all objects. To set these on a per-object basis, subclass the backend and override GoogleCloudStorage.get_object_parameters.

The valid property names are

acl
cache_control
content_disposition
content_encoding
content_language
content_type
metadata
storage_class

If not set, the content_type property will be guessed.

If set, acl overrides GS_DEFAULT_ACL.

Warning

Do not set name. This is set automatically based on the filename.

custom_endpoint or GS_CUSTOM_ENDPOINT

default: None

Sets a custom endpoint, that will be used instead of https://storage.googleapis.com when generating URLs for files.

location or GS_LOCATION

default: ''

Subdirectory in which files will be stored.

expiration or GS_EXPIRATION

default: timedelta(seconds=86400))

The time that a generated URL is valid before expiration. The default is 1 day. Public files will return a url that does not expire. Files will be signed by the credentials provided to django-storages (See GS Credentials).

Note: Default Google Compute Engine (GCE) Service accounts are unable to sign urls.

The expiration value is handled by the underlying Google library. It supports timedelta, datetime, or integer seconds since epoch time.

Note: The maximum value for this option is 7 days (604800 seconds) in version v4 (See this Github issue)