ImproperlyConfigured at / Empty static prefix not permitted - Django

Question

I'm working on uploading/displaying images with Django.

The website is deployed on Heroku.

Following this tutorial I was able to successfully upload images.

However, the images weren't being displayed in the template.

I then learned that my urls.py should have this line at the end:

+ static(settings.MEDIA_URL, document_root=settings.MEDIA_ROOT)

I added this to the end of my urls.py but now I'm getting this error:

ImproperlyConfigured at / Empty static prefix not permitted

I have MEDIA_URL and MEDIA_ROOT in my settings.py and neither are empty.

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

MEDIA_ROOT = os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'media')

# URL that handles the media served from MEDIA_ROOT. Make sure to use a
# trailing slash.
# Examples: "http://example.com/media/", "http://media.example.com/"
MEDIA_URL = '/media/'

Why is this error happening and how would I fix it?

Here's what I think is the relevant part of my urls.py:

from django.contrib import admin
from django.conf import settings
from django.conf.urls.static import static
import notifications
admin.autodiscover()

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    ....urls......

) + static(settings.MEDIA_URL, document_root=settings.MEDIA_ROOT)

Answer 1

I added the same line in my urls.py and got the same error as you.

+ static(settings.MEDIA_URL, document_root=settings.MEDIA_ROOT)

The documentation here says to use settings.STATIC_URL and settings.STATIC_ROOT

I changed it to the documentation version

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    ....urls......

) + static(settings.STATIC_URL, document_root=settings.STATIC_ROOT)

and the error went away!

I checked my settings file and made sure settings.MEDIA_URL and settings.MEDIA_ROOT were both defined correctly. Later I adjusted urls.py back to using settings.MEDIA_URL and settings.MEDIA_ROOT. Everything worked as expected.

These are the relevant parts of my settings.py file:

BASE_DIR = os.path.dirname(os.path.dirname(__file__))
REPOSITORY_ROOT = os.path.dirname(BASE_DIR)

# Static files (CSS, JavaScript, Images)
# https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.6/howto/static-files/

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

MEDIA_URL = '/media/'
MEDIA_ROOT = os.path.join(REPOSITORY_ROOT, 'media/')

I think MEDIA_URL was set incorrectly