include_patterns in staticfiles finder

[German M. Bravo]

For completeness and also to be able to include only files like *.gif or the like, I've added include_patterns to the list() method in the staticfiles finders. I'm attaching a patch for that.

[Jannis Leidel]

The finder API is currently considered private API, so can you elaborate on the use of this feature? From what I can see it isn't hooked up with any user facing feature.

[Russell Keith-Magee]

Closing needsinfo -- there might be an interesting idea in here, but as Jannis points out, it isn't obvious. The proposed change adds features to an undocumented private API without any obvious public benefit.

Feel free to reopen and elaborate if you feel we have missed something.

[German M. Bravo]

Patch updated for 1.4

[German M. Bravo]

I'll elaborate a bit about what I use this for and reopen the ticket as I believe it could be useful for other things as well and it's also elegant and brings symmetry in the code.

I'm using the template system to produce my CSS files, some CSS files I keep in the database with a personalized template loader, some others are in the filesystem. Nonetheless, I also use a CSS compiler (pyScss) to process the produced CSS files. The way I use the include_patterns is in a function I call finder(), which I use to request some given template file(s) in a glob (no matter if it's in the database or the filesystem), finder() returns all the templates that match the given glob, returning the path (if available) and the storage, the same I later use to consistently open and read each file:

    from django.contrib.staticfiles import finders
    def finder(glob):
        for finder in finders.get_finders():
            for path, storage in finder.list([], [glob]):
                yield path, storage

[Aymeric Augustin]

I'm sorry, but this doesn't sound like a common use case for Django, and you're using the API for something that's quite far from its goals.