A Django-based service that I'm working on allows users to upload media files via REST API or Django admin but does not provide or use any static files (like css styles, js libraries, etc.).
Media files are stored in specific fields in database and use S3 bucket as storage backend so server itself does not directly serve any files at all.
Having such a case is running collectstatic command required every time application is being deployed?
Thought the concept of static and media files in Django application is rather simple I'm still confused about whether configurations for them should be somehow related?
As Django won't serve the staticfiles when the DEBUG is False (through deployment), if you want the css, js and other static files (at least in the admin, in your case), you need to run collectstatic.
So if you want django admin to be like your development environment (with css and images), you need it.
Your Django-based service does not need collectstatic at all.
Question is about django admin - because admin app uses static content css/img/js.
Do you use django admin in production?
If yes - then you need to run collectstatic command it, otherwise admin site will be unstyled or totally broken because of missing js files.
If no - then you collectstatic command has no use for you.
Related
Before now, the main domain was serving a WordPress website but I needed to replace that with a new django application.
I was able to successfully deploy the Django application to cPanel, and the application was served on a subdomain without any problems. But when I edit the application url to point to the main domain, the homepage renders without the static files. Initially, I thought it was a static file issue until I tried to access other pages, but all I keep getting is a 404 page that is being served by the old WordPress. Somehow the old wordpress website is conflicting with the django app.
I'm not sure why the old wordpress is still trying to serve the new django pages except the homepage, even though static files are also missing on the homepage.
I figured out that it was the wordpress installation that was interfering with the Django application, so I renamed the wordpress index.php file, and everything works now. This means that the problem is not with the Django configuration but with the fact that a WordPress website was running on that domain before.
Changing the index.php file name fixed it; I could have deleted all the WordPress files and folders and it would still work, but since I still want to keep the files, renaming the index.php means that WordPress won't be able to load the file.
I've built a Django project with Python and a MySQL database. I'm ready to deploy it to a shared server hosting platform called Hostgator. Their tech support tells me to load all my project files directly into a public_html directory, but when I do that, and navigate to my domain, I just see a list of files (see below), instead of the website I built. What am I missing?
I can't find any good documentation for this kind of deployment. I've done the Django deploy checklist and I think I have that stuff done right. I'm wondering about if/what to put in an .htaccess file, and I'm also not sure how to configure my STATIC_URL or STATIC_ROOT. Do I need to update those to have the path of my production domain? I have run the collectstatic command on the project.
As of now, I have the following for my static file handling in settings.py:
STATIC_URL = '/static/'
STATIC_ROOT = os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'static')
You don't want your django app in public_html. If you are using nginx or apache (you are using one of them, probably visible in the lower left of your screenshot just out of crop range), you likely want to proxy to the process running your Django app (gunicorn is one way to do that).
Essentially, Nginx handles all the web traffic, and hands off (via proxy) anything for your Django app to Gunicorn which is running your wsgi application (Django). Nginx can also then serve up your static files as well.
Digital ocean has a decent 'how to' that covers most of it in depth.
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-django-with-postgres-nginx-and-gunicorn-on-ubuntu-16-04
I am using DJango 1.8 and python 3.4.3, and I have been running my app on Debug mode, and found a way to show images inside a directory configured on MEDIA_ROOT, this was my first question and the solution I have found: How to upload and show images in DJango. But reading the docs I found that that solution is not suitable for a served app, so, if I stop using "Debug=True" the images will not be displayed, and I have to use one of the options exposed on this link: Static files on deployment but I don't have money to pay another server, I just can pay my hosting on pythonanywhere, and for the option to use the same server for the images, I don't have idea how to automate the collectstatic and also don't know how to trigger it when an user uploads a new image.
I have used ASP.NET and PHP5 and I didn't had problems with the images in none of them, so, I have two questions:
Is there an easy way to show images URL's?
Is there a high risk security problem if I deploy my app with DEBUG=True?
I hope you can help me, because I find this ridiculous, probably is for better security, but it just not make sense for a framework, instead of making the work easier it make it more difficult and stressful.
Django runserver is not intended for serving up static files in a production environment. It should be limited to development and testing environments.
If you are intending to use django's runserver to server up static files with DEBUG=False then use the --insecure flag.
You should never deploy a site with DEBUG = True due to security implications.
Static files and media assets are 2 different things.
Static Files
Static files are things like images you created and files that come with 3rd party apps you have installed (e.g. django-cms). These files include images, css and javascript files etc.). So you need to have a settings.STATIC_ROOT for this.
python manage.py collectstatic collects static files from different locations and puts them all in a single folder.
Media Files
Media files are things the user uploads (e.g. photos, documents etc.). So you have a settings.MEDIA_ROOT for this. collecstatic won't do anything to media files, they will just be there already once the user uploads them.
Serving up static and media files in production
Frameworks like Django aren't going to cover automatic production server configuration - that is something else you will have to learn unfortunately.
There are a lot of good guides around e.g. this one to help you get started serving media and static files in production.
Regarding server costs, I'm sure you can find a host to give you some free credit, or pay $5/month for a server somewhere... try lowendbox
Here is a guide from pythonanywhere regarding media and static files: https://help.pythonanywhere.com/pages/DjangoStaticFiles/
1) in urls.py add:
(r'^media/(?P<path>.*)$', 'django.views.static.serve',
{'document_root': settings.MEDIA_ROOT, 'show_indexes': True}),
and open url http://myhost.com/media/
2) Never deploy a site into production with DEBUG turned on, DEBUG=True is a security issue,
I am developing a Django application and I want to put it online on DigitalOcean so I can show it to a remote future user. I am quite new to django and python and I have never in my life touched the deployment of web applications, so I'm a bit lost in all that.
I used the one-click install of a django droplet in digitalocean, which uses nginx and gunicorn. I was able to make the app load in the browser using the ip address (159.203.58.210), but the problem is that no static files can be loaded.
I googled that for some days and nothing could help me. I'm guessing it has something to do with either permissions not allowed or that I did not write the static files correcly in my templates and *.py files.
I'm running my application with the command:
python manage.py runserver localhost:9000
I'm using sqlite3 as db
My complete code is here:
https://github.com/gbastien1/carte-interactive
On the server, my app is at /home/django/international
(where international is my site name, the app is called carte_interactive)
My staticfiles settings in settings.py:
STATIC_URL = '/static/'
STATIC_ROOT= '/home/django/international/carte_interactive/static'
my staticfiles settings in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/django.conf (same for media)
location /static {
alias /home/django/international/carte_interactive/static;
}
In my templates, I use {% load staticfiles %}
And I call my static files like so:
{% static 'carte_interactive/css/style.css' %}
And in my .py files, I sometimes call those files like this, which I don't know if it's right:
app_name='carte_interactive'
json_data_url = static('carte_interactive/json/data.json')
json_data_file = open(app_name + json_data_url, 'w') <-- here
It was the only solution that worked on development to access my static files in views.py, but it might be a problem in production with collectstatic and all, I don't know.
I am using django 1.9.4 on server and 1.9.1 on development it seems.
Do you have any idea why my staticfiles are 404 not found on the server but everything works fine on development?
Could there be a permission issue with the folder /home/django/... for the browser to reach my static files?
Is there a better way to call my staticfiles in views.py?
Thanks in advance!
edit:
The console error I get for all my template static files:
http://159.203.58.210/static/carte_interactive/css/style.css Failed to
load resource: the server responded with a status of 404 (Not Found)
I assume that you don't use nginx to serve static assets in
development? Runserver can serve static files, but very much slower
than nginx, which becomes a problem once you have more than a single
web site visitor at a time. You can remove the nginx alias for static
and reload nginx to let runserver serve the files, to confirm whether
it's a problem in the nginx config.
Håken Lid
I removed nginx and made the Django server load the static files, and now I can show it to my future users. This answered my question, though it did not solve the problem itself! Thanks anyway !
I tend to write my API documentation in Markdown and generate a static site with MkDocs. However, the site I'd like to host the documentation on is a Django site. So my question is, and I can't seem to find an answer Googling around, is how would I go about hosting the MkDocs static generated site files at a location like /api/v1/docs and have the static site viewable at that URL?
UPDATE:
I should point out I do serve all static files under Apache and do NOT use runserver or Debug mode to serve static files, that's just crazy. The site is completely built and working along with a REST API.
My question was simply how do I get Django (or should I say Apache) to serve the static site (for my API docs) generated by MkDocs under a certain URL. I understand how to serve media and static files for the site, but not necessarily how to serve what MkDocs generates. It generates a completely static 'site' directory with HTML and assets files in it.
Django is just a framework you need to host your static files and serve them with something like Nginx or Apache etc.
I think you need the alias directive in apache and use that to redirect certain URLs to your static documentation site.
from the docs
urls = [
static(settings.STATIC_URL, document_root=settings.STATIC_ROOT),
("/home","views.home"),
...
]
https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.8/howto/static-files/#serving-static-files-during-development
in your request you would change to
static("/api/v0/docs",document_root="/home/docs/")