Is it possible to serve a static html page at the root of a django project?

Question

I have a django app hosted on pyhtonanywhere. The app resides at username.pythonanywhere.com/MyApp. I would like to serve a static html page at username.pythonanywhere.com. Is this possible? Essentially it would serve as an index linking to /MyApp, /MyApp2, and other future apps.

I can't seem to find any info on how to do this, but I assume I have to modify mysite/mysite/urls.py as navigating to root currently gives me a 404 with messages about failing to find a match in urls.

urlpatterns = [
        url(r'^/$', ???),
        url(r'^admin/', include(admin.site.urls)),
        url(r'^MyApp/', indluce('MyApp.urls')).
]

The previous is my best guess (a bad one i know). That should (correct me if i'm wrong) match the root URL, but I have no idea how to say "hey django just look for a static file", or where that static html should live, or how to tell django where it lives.

Try not to cut my head off. I'm brand new to django.

P.S. I'm using django 1.8 in a virtualenv on PA

Answer 1

Of course you can. In cases where I just need to render a template, I use a TemplateView. Example:

url(r'^$', TemplateView.as_view(template_name='your_template.html'))

I usually order my URL patterns from most specific to least specific to avoid unexpected matches:

from django.views.generic import TemplateView

urlpatterns = [
    url(r'^admin/', include(admin.site.urls)),
    url(r'^MyApp/', include('MyApp.urls')),
    url(r'^$', TemplateView.as_view(template_name='your_template.html')),
]

As far as where Django looks for templates, it's up to your configuration to tell Django where to look: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.8/topics/templates/#configuration

Answer 2

On PythonAnywhere, you can use the static files facility of your web app to serve the static file before it gets to Django:

Put a file called index.html in a directory and then point a static file entry to that directory. If the static file URL is / and the directory is the one with the html file in it, the file will be served at /.

Be aware that you don't want the directory to be above any of your code or you'll expose your code as static files i.e you don't want to use the directory /somewhere/blah if your code is in /somewhere/blah/code, you'll want to put it in /somewhere/no_code_here