Django cannot find my media files (on development server)

Question

The media is currently on my local development machine.

My MEDIA_ROOT, MEDIA_URL, ADMIN_MEDIA_PREFIX and are specified as below:

MEDIA_ROOT = os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), "media")
MEDIA_URL = '/media/'
SITE_URL = 'http://localhost:80'
ADMIN_MEDIA_PREFIX = '/media/admin/'

There is no 'admin' folder but that shouldn't make a difference I don't think. In the urls.py file I have:

(r'^media/(?P<path>.*)$', 'django.views.static.serve', {'document_root': settings.MEDIA_ROOT}),

I am at a loss as to what I should do to get it working. [I am trying to learn django and am working with an existing project that's pretty hairy]

Answer 1

You're mixing and matching pre and post-Django 1.3 static file handling. Originally all static files were served from MEDIA_URL, but Django 1.3 introduced the staticfiles contrib package and the associated STATIC_ROOT and STATIC_URL settings. django.views.static.serve utilizes the new staticfiles app, which you haven't set up.

Assuming you're running Django 1.3, first, you'll need to add 'staticfiles' to your INSTALLED_APPS. Then, you'll need to define STATIC_ROOT and STATIC_URL. The standard location is a project-root level directory named "static".

You'll also need to add the staticfiles template context processor:

TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS = (
    ...
    'django.core.context_processors.static',
)

This will make the STATIC_URL variable available in your templates, so you can reference your resources with something like {{ STATIC_URL }}css/style.css

All your static resources will also need to go into an app(s)-level directory named "static". The actual project-root level "static" directory is never directly used. It's simply the place where the collectstatic management command dumps all your static resources for use in production.

If you want project-wide static resources (not tied to any one particular app), you'll need an entirely separate directory (i.e. not the same as MEDIA_ROOT or STATIC_ROOT). I tend to use one named "assets". You'll then need to tell Django to look in here for static resources as well with the STATICFILES_DIRS setting:

STATICFILES_DIRS = (
    os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), 'assets'), # or whatever you named it
)

MEDIA_ROOT/MEDIA_URL are now only used for user uploads (e.g. any file created through FileFields and ImageFields, so you still need it, but you won't ever manually store anything there.

When you reach production, your webserver will need to serve both MEDIA_ROOT and STATIC_ROOT at MEDIA_URL and STATIC_URL, respectively. You'll also need to run:

$ python manage.py collectstatic

To make Django compile all your static files into the directory specified by STATIC_ROOT.