Django 1.6: How to access static files in view

Question

I've already tried the solution here and it didn't work for me. I'm creating a project based off the Heroku "Getting Started" project for Python.

In views.py, I'd like to be able to access a file in the static/data/ folder. However, most of my attempts I make to create the correct url to the file have failed. The only thing that works is putting the absolute path to the file as it exists on my local file system, which obviously won't work when I deploy my app.

Previous attempts to open the file include:

from django.templatetags.static import static
url = static('data/foobar.csv')
os.path.isfile(url) # False

from django.conf import settings
url = os.path.join(settings.STATIC_URL, 'data/foobar.csv')
os.path.isfile(url) # False

Here is my directory structure:

/appname
  /app
    /templates
    views.py
  /appname
    /static
      /js
      /css
      /data
    settings.py
    urls.py

settings.py:

BASE_DIR = os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__))

DEBUG = True

TEMPLATE_DEBUG = True

ALLOWED_HOSTS = []

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    'django.contrib.admin',
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',
    'app'
)

MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES = (
    'django.contrib.sessions.middleware.SessionMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.common.CommonMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.csrf.CsrfViewMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.auth.middleware.AuthenticationMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.messages.middleware.MessageMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.clickjacking.XFrameOptionsMiddleware',
)

ROOT_URLCONF = 'appname.urls'

WSGI_APPLICATION = 'appname.wsgi.application'

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.sqlite3',
        'NAME': os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'db.sqlite3'),
    }
}

LANGUAGE_CODE = 'en-us'

TIME_ZONE = 'UTC'

USE_I18N = True

USE_L10N = True

USE_TZ = True

DATABASES['default'] =  dj_database_url.config()

SECURE_PROXY_SSL_HEADER = ('HTTP_X_FORWARDED_PROTO', 'https')

ALLOWED_HOSTS = ['*']

STATIC_ROOT = 'staticfiles'
STATIC_URL = '/static/'

STATICFILES_DIRS = (
    os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'static'),
)

Answer 1

The particular staticfiles storage backend you've configured will provide both a path method and a url method.

from django.contrib.staticfiles.storage import staticfiles_storage
p = staticfiles_storage.path('data/foobar.csv')
content = p.readlines()
# manipulate content

The .url method returns the same value as Django's static built-in

url = static('data/foobar.csv')

Answer 2

Instead of joining the STATIC_ROOT with the filename, use the staticfiles_storage interface instead. This will also work with remote static files like S3/django-storages.

from django.contrib.staticfiles.storage import staticfiles_storage

url = staticfiles_storage.url('data/foobar.csv')

With staticfiles_storage you can also do simple file operations like open, delete, save.