Django -- Can't get static CSS files to load

Question

I'm running Django's development server (runserver) on my local machine (Mac OS X) and cannot get the CSS files to load.

Here are the relevant entries in settings.py:

STATIC_ROOT = '/Users/username/Projects/mysite/static/'

STATIC_URL = '/static/'

STATICFILES_DIRS = (
'/Users/thaymore/Projects/mysite/cal/static',
)

STATICFILES_FINDERS = (
'django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.FileSystemFinder',
'django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.AppDirectoriesFinder',
#'django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.DefaultStorageFinder',
)

INSTALLED_APPS = (
# other apps ...
'django.contrib.staticfiles',
)

In my views.py I'm requesting the context:

return render_to_response("cal/main.html",dict(entries=entries),context_instance=RequestContext(request))

And in my template the {{ STATIC_URL }} renders correctly:

<link type="text/css" href="{{ STATIC_URL }}css/main.css" />

Turns into:

<link type="text/css" href="/static/css/main.css"/>

Which is where the file is actually located. I also ran collectstatic to make sure all the files were collected.

I also have the following lines in my urls.py:

from django.contrib.staticfiles.urls import staticfiles_urlpatterns

urlpatterns += staticfiles_urlpatterns()

I'm new to Django so am probably missing something simple -- would appreciate any help.

Answer 1

Read this carefully: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/contrib/staticfiles/

Is django.contrib.staticfiles in your INSTALLED_APPS in settings.py?

Is DEBUG=False? If so, you need to call runserver with the --insecure parameter:

python manage.py runserver --insecure 

collectstatic has no bearing on serving files via the development server. It is for collecting the static files in one location STATIC_ROOT for your web server to find them. In fact, running collectstatic with your STATIC_ROOT set to a path in STATICFILES_DIRS is a bad idea. You should double-check to make sure your CSS files even exist now.

Answer 2

For recent releases of Django, You have to configure static files in settings.py as,

STATIC_URL = '/static/' # the path in url

STATICFILES_DIRS = [
    os.path.join(BASE_DIR, "static"),
]

and use it with static template tag,

{% load static %}
<link rel="stylesheet" href="{% static 'css/bootstrap.css' %}">