id	summary	reporter	owner	description	type	status	component	version	severity	resolution	keywords	cc	stage	has_patch	needs_docs	needs_tests	needs_better_patch	easy	ui_ux
20819	`staticfiles.views.serve` should return 404 response instead of raising `ImproperlyConfigured`	Tai Lee	nobody	"I use this view to serve static files without having to `collectstatic` all the time during development, but I don't want to have code like this to create my root urlconf:

{{{
urlpatterns = patterns('',
    # urls
)

if 'runserver' in sys.argv:
    urlpatterns += patterns('',
        url(r'^static/(.*)', 'django.contrib.staticfiles.views.serve', name='static'),
    )

urlpatterns += patterns('',
    # more urls. e.g. a catch-all that includes the URLs of another app at the root level.
    url(r'^', include('myapp.urls')),
)
}}}

The above example also means that the `static` URL cannot be reversed by name, because it's only present during development. In some cases it can be convenient to simply reverse a URL name like this directly from a template or Python code.

If I leave the URL in my root urlconf and deploy to production to avoid these issues, and I forget to `collectstatic` after an update or if visitors request a static file that really doesn't exist, I get an HTTP 500 error emailed to me.

This view shouldn't do anything in production, but I think it should be sufficient to simply return a 404 error instead of raising `ImproperlyConfigured`. This is still an accurate error (static files that do exist will be served by the front-end server), and developers should know that a 404 for static media in production means they need to run `collectstatic`.

I discussed this briefly with jezdez on IRC who seemed OK with this idea, as long as the documentation was clear that this view would return a 404 and not return static files if used in production.
"	Cleanup/optimization	closed	contrib.staticfiles	dev	Normal	fixed	staticfiles serve ImproperlyConfigured		Accepted	1	0	0	0	0	0