I've looked through countless answers and questions trying to find a single definitive guide or way to do this, but it seems that everyone has a different way. Can someone please just explain to me how to serve static files in templates?
Assuming I've just created a brand new project with Django 1.4, what all do I need to do to be able to render images? Where should I put the media and static folders?
Put your static files into <app>/static or add an absolute path to STATICFILES_DIRS
Configure your web server (you should not serve static files with Django) to serve files in STATIC_ROOT
Point STATIC_URL to the base URL the web server serves
Run ./manage.py collectstatic
Be sure to use RequestContext in your render calls and {{ STATIC_URL }} to prefix paths
Coffee and pat yourself on the back
A little bit more about running a web server in front of Django. Django is practically an application server. It has not been designed to be any good in serving static files. That is why it actively refuses to do that when DEBUG=False. Also, the Django development server should not be used for production. This means that there should be something in front of Django at all times. It may be a WSGI server such as gunicorn or a 'real' web server such as nginx or Apache.
If you are running a reverse proxy (such as nginx or Apache) you can bind /static to a path in the filesystem and the rest of the traffic to pass through to Django. That means your STATIC_URL can be a relative path. Otherwise you will need to use an absolute URL.
The created project should have a static folder. Put all resources (images, ...) in there.
Then, in your HTML template, you can reference STATIC_ROOT and add the resource path (relative to the static folder)
Here is the official documentation:
How to manage static files: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.4/howto/static-files/
Static Files in general: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.4/ref/contrib/staticfiles/
If you are planning to to deploy in a production type setting then you should read the section here: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.4/howto/static-files/#staticfiles-production
Generally you put our static and media folders outside of the django project app
Define your STATICFILES_DIRS, STATIC, and MEDIA path in the settings.
Create staticfiles folder beside your templates folder, urls.py, settings.py, etc...
You don't have to create media folder because it will automatically created when you upload images.
In your urlconf put this one:
from django.conf.urls import patterns, include, url
from django.contrib import admin
from django.conf import settings
from django.contrib.staticfiles.urls import staticfiles_urlpatterns
from django.conf.urls.static import static
admin.autodiscover()
urlpatterns = patterns('',
.............
) + static(settings.MEDIA_URL, document_root=settings.MEDIA_ROOT)
urlpatterns += staticfiles_urlpatterns()
In templates:
{% load static %}
<img src="{% static 'images.png' %}">
<img src="{{MEDIA_URL}}images.png">
Related
I want to apply CSS on my Django project.
CSS path in my index.html is right but it doesn't work well.
My index.html page show up well in my site,
--app_index
----index.html
----bootstrap
-------css
-----------abc.css
-----------abc2.css
So, must I modify the URL.py file too?
You need to configure static files in your Django app. The following links should help guide you in the right direction:
http://www.tangowithdjango.com/book/chapters/templates_static.html
https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.7/howto/static-files/
You will set up your index.html for example in a template directory that can access your static files (e.g. CSS, javascript, static images, etc.) that are located in your static directory.
In response to your question concerning modification of urls.py, the answer is yes. As you will see in the links on configuring static files within your project, you have to add some code to your urls.py. An example of this code might look like this:
if settings.DEBUG:
import debug_toolbar
urlpatterns += patterns(
'django.views.static',
(r'media/(?P<path>.*)',
'serve',
{'document_root': settings.MEDIA_ROOT}),
url(r'^__debug__/', include(debug_toolbar.urls))
)
During development Django serves your static files hence the above code, but during production your static files are served via your configured server (e.g. Apache, nginx).
I would like to serve static (assets) files in the following structure (which coincidentally is the same as the local path:
https app/[appname]/static/*
local_path app/[appname]/static/*
currently, my urls.py from app folder is
from django.conf.urls import patterns, include, url
urlpatterns = patterns('',
url(r'', 'app.views.load'),
)
How am I going to map the static requests to each application static folder?
I know this is usually not a task for python. In production, this would probably be routed by nginx before reaching python.. But for now, I need this implemented inside django.
I have a problem about serving admin uploaded files in my templates.
I set:
MEDIA_URL='/media/'
MEDIA_ROOT = 'assets/'
and my models are like:
mainPhoto = models.ImageField(upload_to="articles/")
When in my templates, I try:
<img src="{{MEDIA_URL}}{{article.mainPhoto}}" />
The image doesn't show up on the website.
I found one deprecated solution with the django .serve(), but I hope to avoid using it.
I was looking everywhere and didn't find any answer, so I hope someone here will be able to help me.
There are two parts to make this work. First is the Django configuration. There are really two settings for this which you have already mentioned - MEDIA_URL and MEDIA_ROOT. As already noted in the comments the MEDIA_ROOT has to be an absolute path. For example:
MEDIA_ROOT = `/abs/path/to/project/media/`
Second part is actually serving the files. If you are in production, you NEVER want to serve your static or media files through Django so you should configure Apache or nginx or whatever server system you are using to serve the files instead of Django. If you are on the other hand still developing the app, there is a simple way to make Django serve media files. The idea is to modify your urls.py and use the Django's static files server to serve media files as well:
# urls.py
from django.conf import settings
from django.conf.urls.static import static
urlpatterns = patterns('',
# other patterns
) + static(settings.MEDIA_URL, document_root=settings.MEDIA_ROOT)
More about this approach at Django docs.
Also FYI, you probably should not use {{MEDIA_URL}}{{article.mainPhoto}} to get the url of an image. This approach will break for example if you will no longer use file system storage for static files and will switch to something different like Amazon S3. It is always a good idea for the storage backend to figure out the url:
<img src="{{article.mainPhoto.url}}" />
I have had this problem for a while now, I have been trying to move my CSS file all over the place and changing the settings, and even messing with the media url stuff, which I don't believe I should be now that I have read other questions.
My CSS file is in the /home/justin/test/static/ directory. My templates are in the /test/templates directory.
My settings are:
STATIC_ROOT = '/home/justin/test/static/'
STATIC_URL = '/static/'
STATICFILES_DIRS = (
'/home/justin/test/static/',
)
My urls are:
urlpatterns = patterns('',
url(r'^$', 'views.home'),
# Static Files
url(r'^static/(?P<path>.*)$','django.views.static.serve', {'document_root':settings.MEDIA_ROOT}),
)
I have all three in my main template.
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/static/style.css" />
<link rel="stylesheet" href="{{ STATIC_URL }}style.css" />
<link rel="stylesheet" href="{{ STATIC_URL }}/style.css" />
They come out:
<link href="/static/style.css" rel="stylesheet"></link>
<link href="style.css" rel="stylesheet"></link>
<link href="/style.css" rel="stylesheet"></link>
The first comes out to the correct file, but it doesn't work.
Any help is really appreciated. Thank you.
My views.py:
from django.shortcuts import render_to_response
def home(request):
return render_to_response('index.html',{})
My error from the terminal is:
[16/Aug/2013 21:00:21] "GET /static/style.css HTTP/1.1" 500 1729
You need to pass request in RequestContext of your views
def home(request):
return render_to_response('index.html', locals(), context_instance = RequestContext(request))
Only then your session data will be passed to the template and {{ STATIC_URL }} will work.
Here are some tips to help you solve this problem.
First, anything to do with MEDIA_ is referring to files that are uploaded to the system by users; and STATIC_ refers to files that are part of your application.
STATIC_ROOT should point to the file system path where the collectstatic command will dump all the static files from all your applications. When you are deploying the application into a production environment, you run collectstatic (which will overwrite everything in the directory pointed to by STATIC_ROOT) and then copy the contents of this directory to a location that is mapped to the url that STATIC_URL points to.
In summary:
If your application needs any static files (images, javascript, css, etc.) create a directory called static in your application's directory (the same location where you have models.py) and add the files there.
STATIC_ROOT should point to a directory where all the images, css, javascript, etc. will be dumped by the collectstatic command. This is only used when you want to move your application to a production server. The collectstatic command will grab all the files in all the static directories in your applications that are listed in INSTALLED_APPS (including the ones from the django.contrib like the admin interface) and dump them in this directory. You would then take this directory and copy or move it to your web server.
STATICFILES_DIRS is a directory where any static files that are not part of any specific application should be stored. If this location is set, then django will also look here for static files.
STATIC_URL = the URL path that is configured in your web server to point to the location where all the files in STATIC_ROOT are located.
The {% static %} tag will always point to the STATIC_URL variable. In order to use this tag you must have {% load staticfiles %} at the top of any template that is using the tag; even if the template is inheriting from one that already as the load line in it.
You don't need anything fancy in your urls.py unless you are using django to serve your static files (which you should not do). Use the web server to handle static files. If you are running with DEBUG = True and using runserver, then django will take care of handling static files for you automatically as a courtesy during development.
For any user uploaded files which are controlled by the various MEDIA_* settings you need to handle these manually during development; and for this you can use the following snippet in your urs.py. Again, keep in mind this is only for development - do not use this in production:
from django.conf import settings
from django.conf.urls.static import static
urlpatterns = patterns('',
# ... the rest of your URLconf goes here ...
)
if settings.DEBUG:
urlpatterns += static(settings.MEDIA_URL,
document_root=settings.MEDIA_ROOT)
Please read the static files section in the manual; from where I have summarized the above points.
Finally, you should use the render shortcut when using methods in your views. This makes sure that the proper request context is always sent.
you must use this tag ({% load static from staticfiles %}) in your template :
{% load static from staticfiles %}
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="{% static 'style.css' %}" />
In your urls, you should serve from the STATIC_ROOT not the MEDIA_ROOT setting
url(r'^static/(?P<path>.*)$','django.views.static.serve', {'document_root':settings.STATIC_ROOT})
Also, you need to pass RequestContext on your views, like stated in other answers.
In development mode (which means DEBUG=True in settings.py), to serve static files
Simply put the following lines in urls.py
from django.contrib.staticfiles.urls import staticfiles_urlpatterns
# ... the rest of your URLconf here ...
urlpatterns += staticfiles_urlpatterns()
In production mode, you should use nginx/apache in front of django to serve static files.
Refs: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/contrib/staticfiles/
There's a line in your question:
url(r'^static/(?P<path>.*)$','django.views.static.serve', {'document_root':settings.MEDIA_ROOT}),
Normally, settings.MEDIA_ROOT is for user uploaded files, which is a different folder from settings.STATIC_ROOT.
I'm using http://appfog.com I have DEBUG = True and ADMIN_MEDIA_PREFIX = '/static/admin/'
The css for the admin is missing.
Django only serves static files if DEBUG=True and it is running the development server.
Documentation:
This view is automatically enabled and will serve your static files at STATIC_URL when you use the built-in runserver management command
[...]
To enable this view if you are using some other server for local development, you'll add a couple of lines to your URLconf. The first line goes at the top of the file, and the last line at the bottom.
Example:
from django.contrib.staticfiles.urls import staticfiles_urlpatterns
# ... the rest of your URLconf goes here ...
urlpatterns += staticfiles_urlpatterns()
Hope this helps
Using dbieber's Django template for appfog this is the approach that worked for me:
Create a directory for static files in your project directory, then set up a URL to have the appfog server serve these files:
cd <project>
mkdir static
In urls.py, make sure the urlpattern is set to include static files (this is already there if you use the template):
urlpatterns += patterns('',
...
url(r'^static/(?P<path>.*)$',
'django.views.static.serve',
{'document_root': settings.STATIC_ROOT),
)
Collect all static files into the static directory
python manage.py collectstatic
Deploy to appfog
af update <appname>