Python Django: You're using the staticfiles app without having set the STATIC_ROOT setting

Question

I'm trying to deploy my Django application to the web, but I get the following error:

You're using the staticfiles app without having set the STATIC_ROOT setting to a filesystem path

However, I did in my production.py:

from django.conf import settings

DEBUG = False
TEMPLATE_DEBUG = True
DATABASES = settings.DATABASES

STATIC_ROOT = os.path.join(PROJECT_ROOT, 'static')

# Update database configuration with $DATABASE_URL.
import dj_database_url
db_from_env = dj_database_url.config(conn_max_age=500)
DATABASES['default'].update(db_from_env)

# Static files (CSS, JavaScript, Images)
# https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.9/howto/static-files/

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

STATIC_URL = '/static/'

# Extra places for collectstatic to find static files.
STATICFILES_DIRS = (
    os.path.join(PROJECT_ROOT, 'static'),
)

# Simplified static file serving.
# https://warehouse.python.org/project/whitenoise/

STATICFILES_STORAGE = 'whitenoise.django.GzipManifestStaticFilesStorage'

Answer 1

What is the production.py file? How do you import your settings?

Depending on how you got this error (serving django through a wsgi server or on the command line), check for manage.py or wsgi.py to see what is the name of the default settings file.

If you want to manuallly set the settings to use, use something like this:

./manage.py --settings=production

Where production is any python module.

Moreover, your settings file should not import anything django related. If you want to split your settings for different environments, use something like this.

A file settings/base.py

# All settings common to all environments
PROJECT_ROOT = os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__))
STATIC_URL = '/static/'
STATIC_ROOT = os.path.join(PROJECT_ROOT, 'static')

Files like settings/local.py, settings/production.py…

# Production settings
from settings.base import *
DEBUG = False
DATABASES = …

Answer 2

If you are using Django 2.2 or greater, your settings file already has a line similar to this:

# Build paths inside the project like this: os.path.join(BASE_DIR, ...)
BASE_DIR = os.path.dirname(os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__)))

Therefore you can easily set static like so:

STATIC_URL = '/static/'
STATIC_ROOT = os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'static')

Answer 3

Set the STATIC_ROOT setting to the directory from which you’d like to serve static files, for example:

STATIC_ROOT = "/var/www/example.com/static/"

The settings you are using are for development. Check the Django docs for more information here