serving static files on Django production tutorial

Question

Does anyone have a simple step-by-step tutorial about serving static files on a Django production app? I read the Django docs and it sounds really complicated... I'm trying to go the route of serving static files using a different server like lighttpd, nginx, or cherokee, but setting these up is all Greek to me. I downloaded lighttpd, tried to follow the instructions to install, and within a few seconds got an error. Missing this or that or whatnot... I'm not a UNIX whiz and I'm not very good at C/C++, so all this ./configure and MAKE install are gibberish to me... So I guess my immediate questions are:

1. Which server would you recommend to serve static files that's easy to install and easy to maintain?
2. Assuming I actually get the server up and running, then what? How do I tell Django to look for the files on that other server?
3. Again, anyone has step-by-step tutorials?

Thanks a lot!

Answer 1

Sorry, don't have a step by step tutorial. But here is a high level overview that might help:

1. You probably want to go with the Apache server ( http://httpd.apache.org/) This comes with most *nix distributions.
2. You then want to use mod python (or as the commenter pointed out mod_wsgi: http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/howto/deployment/modwsgi/) to connect to Django : http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/howto/deployment/modpython/?from=olddocs. Once you complete this step, Apache is now fronting for Django.
3. Next you want to collect the static files in your Django into one directory and point apache at that directory. You can do this using the the ./manage.py collectstatic if you used django.contrib.staticfiles (http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/howto/static-files/.)

So the trick is you're not telling Django to delegate serving static files to a specific server. Rather you're telling httpd which urls are served via Django and what urls are static files.

Another way of saying this is that all requests come to the Apache web server. The webserver, according to the rules you specify in httpd.conf, will decide whether the request is for a static file or whether it is for a dynamic file generated by django. If it for a static file it will simply serve the file. If the request is for a dynamic file it will, via modpython, pass the request to Django.

Hope that helps.

Answer 2

Updated for urls.py

the url(....) format doesn't work anymore in urls.py for Django 3.0.7.

you need to do then:

urls.py:

from django.conf import settings # to import static in deployment
from django.conf.urls.static import static # to import static in deployment
....
urlpatterns = [
....

] + static(settings.STATIC_URL, document_root=settings.STATIC_ROOT) # to import static in deployment

Reference: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.0/howto/static-files/

Answer 3

With the latest Django version like Django 3.2.6 I was having issues serving media and static files both in the dev and prod environment while DEBUG = False.

So I got around a solution that came from multiple stack overflow posts.

1. Import appropriate functions to urls.py

from django.urls import include, path, re_path
from django.views.static import serve

2. Define static URL pattern list to urls.py

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

Assuming your STATIC_ROOT and MEDIA_ROOT is already defined in settings.py file

3. Just include static_urlpatterns in urlpatterns

urlpatterns = [
    path("admin/", admin.site.urls),
    path("api/", include(api_urlpatterns)),
    path("", include(static_urlpatterns)),
]

Hope it works for you both in the dev and prod environment when DEBUG = FALSE. Thank you.