MEDIA_ROOT y cargas de archivos

Static files ship with your code. Media files are uploaded by your users at runtime, like avatars or documents, and they need their own home.

MEDIA_ROOT is the absolute folder on disk where Django saves every uploaded file. It lives outside your source code tree.

MEDIA_URL is the public prefix browsers use to request an uploaded file, just like STATIC_URL does for static assets.

To accept an upload, give your model a FileField. Django stores the file on disk and keeps only its path in the database.

The upload_to argument is a subfolder under MEDIA_ROOT. Use it to keep uploads tidy, like grouping all resumes together.

Pass a function to upload_to when the path should depend on the instance, such as foldering files per user.

An HTML form that uploads files must set enctype to multipart/form-data, or the browser sends no file bytes at all.

Uploaded bytes do not arrive in request.POST. They land in request.FILES, which you pass into your form to bind them.

Once saved, every file field exposes a .url property that builds the MEDIA_URL link you drop into a template.

Never trust raw uploads. Limit file size and type in your form's clean method to keep malicious files out. 🔒

MEDIA_ROOT should sit outside your repo and never be served by collectstatic. User files and code stay clearly separate.

You learned that MEDIA_ROOT stores user uploads, that FileField with upload_to organizes them, and that request.FILES carries the bytes. 📁