How does Django serve media files?

Question

I have set up a Django application that uses images. I think I have set up the media settings MEDIA_ROOT and MEDIA_URL correctly. However the images don't show up. Do you know what can be the problem?

Let consider this example:

The image files are under /home/www/media/app/photos and we are trying to request http://example.com/photos/123.jpg

Should I use these settings?

MEDIA\_ROOT = /home/www/media

MEDIA_URL = http://example.com/app

UPDATE: Forgot to mention that I'm using built-in development server.

Answer 1

You can just add those lines to your urls.py

from django.urls import re_path
from django.views.static import serve

urlpatterns = [
    ...
    re_path(r'^media/(?P<path>.*)$', serve,{'document_root': settings.MEDIA_ROOT}), 
    ]

Answer 2

FOR DEVELOPMENT ONLY

You can setup a static media server for use with their development server by doing this in your urls.py file. I have attached the code showing how I use it (along with the forced DEBUG conditionals.)

from django.conf import settings
from django.conf.urls.defaults import *      

# Uncomment the next two lines to enable the admin:
from django.contrib import admin
admin.autodiscover()

urlpatterns = patterns('', 
    (r'^$', 'views.index'),            

    # Accounts
    (r'^accounts/login/$', 'views.user_login'),
    (r'^accounts/logout/$', 'views.user_logout'),

    # Contrib Modules
    (r'^admin/(.*)', admin.site.root),
)

if settings.DEBUG :
    urlpatterns += patterns('',
        (r'^media/(?P<path>.*)$', 'django.views.static.serve', {'document_root': settings.MEDIA_ROOT, 'show_indexes': True}),
    )

I place my MEDIA_ROOT in a subdirectory of html/media and link to it as such in settings.py

MEDIA_ROOT = os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), 'html/media/').replace('\\','/')

After development is finished, the project gets deployed to the web server where static media files are then served by Apache using directives.