Disable caching for a view or url in django

Question

In django, I wrote a view that simply returns a file, and now I am having problems because memcache is trying to cache that view, and in it\'s words, \"TypeError: can\'t pickle

Answer 1

Returning a real, actual file object from a view sounds like something is wrong. I can see returning the contents of a file, feeding those contents into an HttpResponse object. If I understand you correctly, you're caching the results of this view into a file. Something like this:

def myview(request):
    file = open('somefile.txt','r')
    return file    # This isn't gonna work. You need to return an HttpRequest object.

I'm guessing that if you turned caching off entirely in settings.py, your "can't pickle a file object" would turn into a "view must return an http response object."

If I'm on the right track with what's going on, then here are a couple of ideas.

You mentioned you're making a file-based cache for this one view. You sure you want to do that instead of just using memcached?

If you really do want a file, then do something like:

def myview(request):
    file = open('somefile.txt','r')
    contents = file.read()
    resp = HttpRespnse()
    resp.write(contents)
    file.close()
    return resp

That will solve your "cannot pickle a file" problem.