Control over filenames

[alejasper]

At present, if a file already exists within the directory with the same name, the new file is renamed. Is there any way to preserve the orginal filename either by deleting the old existing file, renaming the existing file first, sending a sub directory or some other way?
Kind regards.

[vdboor]

For the S3 storage there is an AWS_PRIVATE_S3_FILE_OVERWRITE setting. The standard Django FileSystemStorage doesn't have such option afaik.

[jedie]

I recently implemented OverwriteFileSystemStorage backend for something like this with optional backup functionality. Available in my django-tools project:

https://github.com/jedie/django-tools#overwritefilesystemstorage

[Chrescht]

I ended up using a function for upload_to in the model definition:

def get_file_path_photo(instance, filename):
    date_now = datetime.now().strftime('%Y-%m-%d_%H.%M.%S%')
    ext = filename.split('.')[-1]
    filename = f"photo_{instance.somefield}_{date_now}.{ext}"
    return os.path.join('photos', filename)

Then, when defining your FileField/ImageField, specify get_file_path as the upload_to value.

class myModel(..):
    photo = models.FileField(upload_to=get_file_path_photo, ..)

instance.somefield has to exist in the database before the file is saved
The name should be unique, in this case the instance - date combination is taking care of that bit.

source: stackoverflow: enforce unique upload file names using django