Ticket #15983: static-files.txt

=====================
Managing static files
=====================

.. versionadded:: 1.3

Django developers mostly concern themselves with the dynamic parts of web
applications -- the views and templates that render anew for each request. But
web applications have other parts: the static files (images, CSS,
Javascript, etc.) that are needed to render a complete web page.

For small projects, this isn't a big deal, because you can just keep the
static files somewhere your web server can find it. However, in bigger
projects -- especially those comprised of multiple apps -- dealing with the
multiple sets of static files provided by each application starts to get
tricky.

That's what ``django.contrib.staticfiles`` is for: it collects static files
from each of your applications (and any other places you specify) into a
single location that can easily be served in production.

.. note::

    If you've used the `django-staticfiles`_ third-party app before, then
    ``django.contrib.staticfiles`` will look very familiar. That's because
    they're essentially the same code: ``django.contrib.staticfiles`` started
    its life as `django-staticfiles`_ and was merged into Django 1.3.

    If you're upgrading from ``django-staticfiles``, please see `Upgrading from
    django-staticfiles`_, below, for a few minor changes you'll need to make.

.. _django-staticfiles: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/django-staticfiles/

Using ``django.contrib.staticfiles``
====================================

Here's the basic usage in a nutshell:

    1. Put your static files somewhere that ``staticfiles`` will find them.

       By default, this means within ``static/`` subdirectories of apps in your
       :setting:`INSTALLED_APPS`.

       Many projects will also have static assets that aren't tied to a
       particular app; you can give ``staticfiles`` additional directories to
       search via the :setting:`STATICFILES_DIRS` setting .

       See the documentation for the :setting:`STATICFILES_FINDERS` setting for
       details on how ``staticfiles`` finds your files.

    2. Set the :setting:`STATIC_URL` setting to the URL you want to use
       for pointing to your static files, e.g.::

           STATIC_URL = '/static/'

       In projects freshly created with the :djadmin:`startproject`
       management command this will be preset to ``'/static/'``.

    3. Make sure that ``django.contrib.staticfiles`` is in your
       :setting:`INSTALLED_APPS`.

       If you are using the :ref:`runserver<staticfiles-runserver>` for local 
       development, it will automatically find and serve your static files at the
       :setting:`STATIC_URL` you specified in step 2. 
       
       If you are using some other server for local development, you'll need to add    
       :ref:`staticfiles_urlpatterns<staticfiles-development>` to your URLconf.
       
       Assuming the default preset, a file in an app's ``static/`` subdirectory will be 
       served up at '/static/'. Therefore, the file ``my_app/static/my_app/css/my_app.css`` 
       will be served up at '/static/my_app/css/my_app.css'.
       
    4. You'll probably need to refer to these files in your templates. The
       easiest method is to use the included context processor which will allow
       template code like:

          .. code-block:: html+django

               <img src="{{ STATIC_URL }}images/hi.jpg />

       See :ref:`staticfiles-in-templates` for more details, including an
       alternate method (using a template tag).

When you're ready to move out of local development and deploy your project:

    1. Set the :setting:`STATIC_ROOT` setting to point to where you'd like your
       static files collected to when you use the :djadmin:`collectstatic`
       management command. For example::

            STATIC_ROOT = "/home/jacob/projects/mysite.com/sitestatic"

    2. Run the :djadmin:`collectstatic` management command::

            ./manage.py collectstatic

       This'll churn through your static file storage and copy them into the
       directory given by :setting:`STATIC_ROOT`.

    3. Deploy those files by configuring your webserver of choice to serve the
       files in :setting:`STATIC_ROOT` at :setting:`STATIC_URL`.

       :ref:`staticfiles-production` covers some common deployment strategies
       for static files.

Those are the basics. For more details on common configuration options, read on;
for a detailed reference of the settings, commands, and other bits included with
the framework see :doc:`the staticfiles reference </ref/contrib/staticfiles>`.

.. note::

   In previous versions of Django, it was common to place static assets in
   :setting:`MEDIA_ROOT` along with user-uploaded files, and serve them both at
   :setting:`MEDIA_URL`. Part of the purpose of introducing the ``staticfiles``
   app is to make it easier to keep static files separate from user-uploaded
   files. For this reason, you need to make your :setting:`MEDIA_ROOT` and
   :setting:`MEDIA_URL` different from your :setting:`STATIC_ROOT` and
   :setting:`STATIC_URL`. You will need to arrange for serving of files in
   :setting:`MEDIA_ROOT` yourself; ``staticfiles`` does not deal with
   user-uploaded files at all. You can, however, use
   :func:`~django.views.static.serve` view for serving :setting:`MEDIA_ROOT`
   in development; see :ref:`staticfiles-other-directories`.

.. _staticfiles-in-templates:

Referring to static files in templates
======================================

At some point, you'll probably need to link to static files in your templates.
You could, of course, simply hardcode the path to you assets in the templates:

.. code-block:: html

    <img src="http://static.example.com/static/myimage.jpg" />

Of course, there are some serious problems with this: it doesn't work well in
development, and it makes it *very* hard to change where you've deployed your
static files. If, for example, you wanted to switch to using a content
delivery network (CDN), then you'd need to change more or less every single
template.

A far better way is to use the value of the :setting:`STATIC_URL` setting
directly in your templates. This means that a switch of static files servers
only requires changing that single value. Much better!

``staticfiles`` inludes two built-in ways of getting at this setting in your
templates: a context processor and a template tag.

With a context processor
------------------------

The included context processor is the easy way. Simply make sure
``'django.core.context_processors.static'`` is in your
:setting:`TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS`. It's there by default, and if you're
editing that setting by hand it should look something like::

    TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS = (
        'django.core.context_processors.debug',
        'django.core.context_processors.i18n',
        'django.core.context_processors.media',
        'django.core.context_processors.static',
        'django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth',
        'django.contrib.messages.context_processors.messages',
    )

Once that's done, you can refer to :setting:`STATIC_URL` in your templates:

.. code-block:: html+django

     <img src="{{ STATIC_URL }}images/hi.jpg />

If ``{{ STATIC_URL }}`` isn't working in your template, you're probably not
using :class:`~django.template.RequestContext` when rendering the template.

As a brief refresher, context processors add variables into the contexts of
every template. However, context processors require that you use
:class:`~django.template.RequestContext` when rendering templates. This happens
automatically if you're using a :doc:`generic view </ref/class-based-views>`,
but in views written by hand you'll need to explicitally use ``RequestContext``
To see how that works, and to read more details, check out
:ref:`subclassing-context-requestcontext`.

With a template tag
-------------------

The second option is the :ttag:`get_static_prefix` template tag. You can
use this if you're not using :class:`~django.template.RequestContext`, or if you
need more control over exactly where and how :setting:`STATIC_URL` is
injected into the template. Here's an example:

.. code-block:: html+django

    {% load static %}
    <img src="{% get_static_prefix %}images/hi.jpg" />

There's also a second form you can use to avoid extra processing if you need the
value multiple times:

.. code-block:: html+django

    {% load static %}
    {% get_static_prefix as STATIC_PREFIX %}

    <img src="{{ STATIC_PREFIX }}images/hi.jpg" />
    <img src="{{ STATIC_PREFIX }}images/hi2.jpg" />

.. _staticfiles-development:

Serving static files in development
===================================

The static files tools are mostly designed to help with getting static files
successfully deployed into production. This usually means a separate,
dedicated static file server, which is a lot of overhead to mess with when
developing locally. Thus, the ``staticfiles`` app ships with a
**quick and dirty helper view** that you can use to serve files locally in
development.

This view is automatically enabled and will serve your static files at
:setting:`STATIC_URL` when you use the built-in
:ref:`runserver<staticfiles-runserver>` management command.

To enable this view if you are using some other server for local development,
you'll add a couple of lines to your URLconf. The first line goes at the top
of the file, and the last line at the bottom::

    from django.contrib.staticfiles.urls import staticfiles_urlpatterns

    # ... the rest of your URLconf goes here ...

    urlpatterns += staticfiles_urlpatterns()

This will inspect your :setting:`STATIC_URL` setting and wire up the view
to serve static files accordingly. Don't forget to set the
:setting:`STATICFILES_DIRS` setting appropriately to let
``django.contrib.staticfiles`` know where to look for files additionally to
files in app directories.

.. warning::

    This will only work if :setting:`DEBUG` is ``True``.

    That's because this view is **grossly inefficient** and probably
    **insecure**. This is only intended for local development, and should
    **never be used in production**.

    Additionally, when using ``staticfiles_urlpatterns`` your
    :setting:`STATIC_URL` setting can't be empty or a full URL, such as
    ``http://static.example.com/``.

For a few more details on how the ``staticfiles`` can be used during
development, see :ref:`staticfiles-development-view`.

.. _staticfiles-other-directories:

Serving other directories
-------------------------

.. currentmodule:: django.views.static
.. function:: serve(request, path, document_root, show_indexes=False)

There may be files other than your project's static assets that, for
convenience, you'd like to have Django serve for you in local development.
The :func:`~django.views.static.serve` view can be used to serve any directory
you give it. (Again, this view is **not** hardened for production
use, and should be used only as a development aid; you should serve these files
in production using a real front-end webserver).

The most likely example is user-uploaded content in :setting:`MEDIA_ROOT`.
``staticfiles`` is intended for static assets and has no built-in handling
for user-uploaded files, but you can have Django serve your
:setting:`MEDIA_ROOT` by appending something like this to your URLconf::

    from django.conf import settings

    # ... the rest of your URLconf goes here ...

    if settings.DEBUG:
        urlpatterns += patterns('',
            url(r'^media/(?P<path>.*)$', 'django.views.static.serve', {
                'document_root': settings.MEDIA_ROOT,
            }),
       )

Note, the snippet assumes your :setting:`MEDIA_URL` has a value of
``'/media/'``. This will call the :func:`~django.views.static.serve` view,
passing in the path from the URLconf and the (required) ``document_root``
parameter.

.. currentmodule:: django.conf.urls.static
.. function:: static(prefix, view='django.views.static.serve', **kwargs)

Since it can become a bit cumbersome to define this URL pattern, Django
ships with a small URL helper function
:func:`~django.conf.urls.static.static` that taks as parameters the prefix
such as :setting:`MEDIA_URL` and a dotted path to a view, such as
``'django.views.static.serve'``. Any other function parameter will be
transparently passed to the view.

An example for serving :setting:`MEDIA_URL` (``'/media/'``) during
development::

    from django.conf import settings
    from django.conf.urls.static import static

    urlpatterns = patterns('',
        # ... the rest of your URLconf goes here ...
    ) + static(settings.MEDIA_URL, document_root=settings.MEDIA_ROOT)

.. note::

    The helper function will only be operational in debug mode and if
    the given prefix is local (e.g. ``/static/``) and not a URL (e.g.
    ``http://static.example.com/``).

.. _staticfiles-production:

Serving static files in production
==================================

The basic outline of putting static files into production is simple: run the
:djadmin:`collectstatic` command when static files change, then arrange for
the collected static files directory (:setting:`STATIC_ROOT`) to be moved to
the static file server and served.

Of course, as with all deployment tasks, the devil's in the details. Every
production setup will be a bit different, so you'll need to adapt the basic
outline to fit your needs. Below are a few common patterns that might help.

Serving the app and your static files from the same server
----------------------------------------------------------

If you want to serve your static files from the same server that's already
serving your site, the basic outline gets modified to look something like:

    * Push your code up to the deployment server.
    * On the server, run :djadmin:`collectstatic` to copy all the static files
      into :setting:`STATIC_ROOT`.
    * Point your web server at :setting:`STATIC_ROOT`. For example, here's
      :ref:`how to do this under Apache and mod_wsgi <serving-media-files>`.

You'll probably want to automate this process, especially if you've got
multiple web servers. There's any number of ways to do this automation, but
one option that many Django developers enjoy is `Fabric`__.

__ http://fabfile.org/

Below, and in the following sections, we'll show off a few example fabfiles
(i.e. Fabric scripts) that automate these file deployment options. The syntax
of a fabfile is fairly straightforward but won't be covered here; consult
`Fabric's documentation`__, for a complete explanation of the syntax..

__ http://docs.fabfile.org/

So, a fabfile to deploy static files to a couple of web servers might look
something like::

    from fabric.api import *

    # Hosts to deploy onto
    env.hosts = ['www1.example.com', 'www2.example.com']

    # Where your project code lives on the server
    env.project_root = '/home/www/myproject'

    def deploy_static():
        with cd(env.project_root):
            run('./manage.py collectstatic -v0 --noinput')

Serving static files from a dedicated server
--------------------------------------------

Most larger Django apps use a separate Web server -- i.e., one that's not also
running Django -- for serving static files. This server often runs a different
type of web server -- faster but less full-featured. Some good choices are:

    * lighttpd_
    * Nginx_
    * TUX_
    * Cherokee_
    * A stripped-down version of Apache_

.. _lighttpd: http://www.lighttpd.net/
.. _Nginx: http://wiki.nginx.org/Main
.. _TUX: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TUX_web_server
.. _Apache: http://httpd.apache.org/
.. _Cherokee: http://www.cherokee-project.com/

Configuring these servers is out of scope of this document; check each
server's respective documentation for instructions.

Since your static file server won't be running Django, you'll need to modify
the deployment strategy to look something like:

    * When your static files change, run :djadmin:`collectstatic` locally.
    * Push your local :setting:`STATIC_ROOT` up to the static file server
      into the directory that's being served. ``rsync`` is a good
      choice for this step since it only needs to transfer the
      bits of static files that have changed.

Here's how this might look in a fabfile::

    from fabric.api import *
    from fabric.contrib import project

    # Where the static files get collected locally
    env.local_static_root = '/tmp/static'

    # Where the static files should go remotely
    env.remote_static_root = '/home/www/static.example.com'

    @roles('static')
    def deploy_static():
        local('./manage.py collectstatic')
        project.rysnc_project(
            remote_dir = env.remote_static_root,
            local_dir = env.local_static_root,
            delete = True
        )

.. _staticfiles-from-cdn:

Serving static files from a cloud service or CDN
------------------------------------------------

Another common tactic is to serve static files from a cloud storage provider
like Amazon's S3__ and/or a CDN (content delivery network). This lets you
ignore the problems of serving static files, and can often make for
faster-loading webpages (especially when using a CDN).

When using these services, the basic workflow would look a bit like the above,
except that instead of using ``rsync`` to transfer your static files to the
server you'd need to transfer the static files to the storage provider or CDN.

There's any number of ways you might do this, but if the provider has an API a
:doc:`custom file storage backend </howto/custom-file-storage>` will make the
process incredibly simple. If you've written or are using a 3rd party custom
storage backend, you can tell :djadmin:`collectstatic` to use it by setting
:setting:`STATICFILES_STORAGE` to the storage engine.

For example, if you've written an S3 storage backend in
``myproject.storage.S3Storage`` you could use it with::

    STATICFILES_STORAGE = 'myproject.storage.S3Storage'

Once that's done, all you have to do is run :djadmin:`collectstatic` and your
static files would be pushed through your storage package up to S3. If you
later needed to swich to a different storage provider, it could be as simple
as changing your :setting:`STATICFILES_STORAGE` setting.

For details on how you'd write one of these backends,
:doc:`/howto/custom-file-storage`.

.. seealso::

    The `django-storages`__ project is a 3rd party app that provides many
    storage backends for many common file storage APIs (including `S3`__).

__ http://s3.amazonaws.com/
__ http://code.welldev.org/django-storages/
__ http://code.welldev.org/django-storages/wiki/S3Storage

Upgrading from ``django-staticfiles``
=====================================

``django.contrib.staticfiles`` began its life as `django-staticfiles`_. If
you're upgrading from `django-staticfiles`_ older than 1.0 (e.g. 0.3.4) to
``django.contrib.staticfiles``, you'll need to make a few changes:

    * Application files should now live in a ``static`` directory in each app
      (`django-staticfiles`_ used the name ``media``, which was slightly
      confusing).

    * The management commands ``build_static`` and ``resolve_static`` are now
      called :djadmin:`collectstatic` and :djadmin:`findstatic`.

    * The settings ``STATICFILES_PREPEND_LABEL_APPS``,
      ``STATICFILES_MEDIA_DIRNAMES`` and ``STATICFILES_EXCLUDED_APPS`` were
      removed.

    * The setting ``STATICFILES_RESOLVERS`` was removed, and replaced by the
      new :setting:`STATICFILES_FINDERS`.

    * The default for :setting:`STATICFILES_STORAGE` was renamed from
      ``staticfiles.storage.StaticFileStorage`` to
      ``staticfiles.storage.StaticFilesStorage``

    * If using :ref:`runserver<staticfiles-runserver>` for local development
      (and the :setting:`DEBUG` setting is ``True``), you no longer need to add
      anything to your URLconf for serving static files in development.

Learn more
==========

This document has covered the basics and some common usage patterns. For
complete details on all the settings, commands, template tags, and other pieces
include in ``django.contrib.staticfiles``, see :doc:`the staticfiles reference
</ref/contrib/staticfiles>`.