staticfiles app¶django.contrib.staticfiles 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.
See also
For an introduction to the static files app and some usage examples, see Managing static files (e.g. images, JavaScript, CSS). For guidelines on deploying static files, see Deploying static files.
See staticfiles settings for details on the following settings:
django.contrib.staticfiles exposes three management commands.
collectstatic¶Collects the static files into STATIC_ROOT.
Duplicate file names are by default resolved in a similar way to how template
resolution works: the file that is first found in one of the specified
locations will be used. If you’re confused, the findstatic command
can help show you which files are found.
On subsequent collectstatic runs (if STATIC_ROOT isn’t empty), files
are copied only if they have a modified timestamp greater than the timestamp of
the file in STATIC_ROOT. Therefore if you remove an application from
INSTALLED_APPS, it’s a good idea to use the collectstatic
--clear option in order to remove stale static files.
Files are searched by using the enabled finders. The default is to look in all locations defined in
STATICFILES_DIRS and in the 'static' directory of apps
specified by the INSTALLED_APPS setting.
The collectstatic management command calls the
post_process()
method of the STATICFILES_STORAGE after each run and passes
a list of paths that have been found by the management command. It also
receives all command line options of collectstatic. This is used
by the ManifestStaticFilesStorage
by default.
By default, collected files receive permissions from
FILE_UPLOAD_PERMISSIONS and collected directories receive permissions
from FILE_UPLOAD_DIRECTORY_PERMISSIONS. If you would like different
permissions for these files and/or directories, you can subclass either of the
static files storage classes and specify the
file_permissions_mode and/or directory_permissions_mode parameters,
respectively. For example:
from django.contrib.staticfiles import storage
class MyStaticFilesStorage(storage.StaticFilesStorage):
def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
kwargs['file_permissions_mode'] = 0o640
kwargs['directory_permissions_mode'] = 0o760
super().__init__(*args, **kwargs)
Then set the STATICFILES_STORAGE setting to
'path.to.MyStaticFilesStorage'.
Some commonly used options are:
Do NOT prompt the user for input of any kind.
Ignore files, directories, or paths matching this glob-style pattern. Use multiple times to ignore more. When specifying a path, always use forward slashes, even on Windows.
Do everything except modify the filesystem.
Clear the existing files before trying to copy or link the original file.
Create a symbolic link to each file instead of copying.
Don’t call the
post_process()
method of the configured STATICFILES_STORAGE storage backend.
Don’t ignore the common private glob-style patterns 'CVS', '.*'
and '*~'.
For a full list of options, refer to the commands own help by running:
$ python manage.py collectstatic --help
The default ignored pattern list, ['CVS', '.*', '*~'], can be customized in
a more persistent way than providing the --ignore command option at each
collectstatic invocation. Provide a custom AppConfig
class, override the ignore_patterns attribute of this class and replace
'django.contrib.staticfiles' with that class path in your
INSTALLED_APPS setting:
from django.contrib.staticfiles.apps import StaticFilesConfig
class MyStaticFilesConfig(StaticFilesConfig):
ignore_patterns = [...] # your custom ignore list
findstatic¶Searches for one or more relative paths with the enabled finders.
For example:
$ python manage.py findstatic css/base.css admin/js/core.js
Found 'css/base.css' here:
/home/special.polls.com/core/static/css/base.css
/home/polls.com/core/static/css/base.css
Found 'admin/js/core.js' here:
/home/polls.com/src/django/contrib/admin/media/js/core.js
By default, all matching locations are found. To only return the first match
for each relative path, use the --first option:
$ python manage.py findstatic css/base.css --first
Found 'css/base.css' here:
/home/special.polls.com/core/static/css/base.css
This is a debugging aid; it’ll show you exactly which static file will be collected for a given path.
By setting the --verbosity flag to 0, you can suppress the extra output and
just get the path names:
$ python manage.py findstatic css/base.css --verbosity 0
/home/special.polls.com/core/static/css/base.css
/home/polls.com/core/static/css/base.css
On the other hand, by setting the --verbosity flag to 2, you can get all
the directories which were searched:
$ python manage.py findstatic css/base.css --verbosity 2
Found 'css/base.css' here:
/home/special.polls.com/core/static/css/base.css
/home/polls.com/core/static/css/base.css
Looking in the following locations:
/home/special.polls.com/core/static
/home/polls.com/core/static
/some/other/path/static
runserver¶Overrides the core runserver command if the staticfiles app
is installed and adds automatic serving of static
files. File serving doesn’t run through MIDDLEWARE.
The command adds these options:
Use the --nostatic option to disable serving of static files with the
staticfiles app entirely. This option is
only available if the staticfiles app is
in your project’s INSTALLED_APPS setting.
Example usage:
$ django-admin runserver --nostatic
Use the --insecure option to force serving of static files with the
staticfiles app even if the DEBUG
setting is False. By using this you acknowledge the fact that it’s
grossly inefficient and probably insecure. This is only intended for
local development, should never be used in production and is only
available if the staticfiles app is
in your project’s INSTALLED_APPS setting.
--insecure doesn’t work with ManifestStaticFilesStorage.
Example usage:
$ django-admin runserver --insecure
StaticFilesStorage¶A subclass of the FileSystemStorage
storage backend that uses the STATIC_ROOT setting as the base
file system location and the STATIC_URL setting respectively
as the base URL.
If this method is defined on a storage, it’s called by the
collectstatic management command after each run and gets passed the
local storages and paths of found files as a dictionary, as well as the command
line options. It yields tuples of three values:
original_path, processed_path, processed. The path values are strings and
processed is a boolean indicating whether or not the value was
post-processed, or an exception if post-processing failed.
The ManifestStaticFilesStorage
uses this behind the scenes to replace the paths with their hashed
counterparts and update the cache appropriately.
ManifestStaticFilesStorage¶A subclass of the StaticFilesStorage
storage backend which stores the file names it handles by appending the MD5
hash of the file’s content to the filename. For example, the file
css/styles.css would also be saved as css/styles.55e7cbb9ba48.css.
The purpose of this storage is to keep serving the old files in case some pages still refer to those files, e.g. because they are cached by you or a 3rd party proxy server. Additionally, it’s very helpful if you want to apply far future Expires headers to the deployed files to speed up the load time for subsequent page visits.
The storage backend automatically replaces the paths found in the saved
files matching other saved files with the path of the cached copy (using
the post_process()
method). The regular expressions used to find those paths
(django.contrib.staticfiles.storage.HashedFilesMixin.patterns)
by default covers the @import rule and url() statement of Cascading
Style Sheets. For example, the 'css/styles.css' file with the
content
@import url("../admin/css/base.css");
would be replaced by calling the url()
method of the ManifestStaticFilesStorage storage backend, ultimately
saving a 'css/styles.55e7cbb9ba48.css' file with the following
content:
@import url("../admin/css/base.27e20196a850.css");
Since static files might reference other static files that need to have their
paths replaced, multiple passes of replacing paths may be needed until the file
hashes converge. To prevent an infinite loop due to hashes not converging (for
example, if 'foo.css' references 'bar.css' which references
'foo.css') there is a maximum number of passes before post-processing is
abandoned. In cases with a large number of references, a higher number of
passes might be needed. Increase the maximum number of passes by subclassing
ManifestStaticFilesStorage and setting the max_post_process_passes
attribute. It defaults to 5.
To enable the ManifestStaticFilesStorage you have to make sure the
following requirements are met:
the STATICFILES_STORAGE setting is set to
'django.contrib.staticfiles.storage.ManifestStaticFilesStorage'
the DEBUG setting is set to False
you’ve collected all your static files by using the
collectstatic management command
Since creating the MD5 hash can be a performance burden to your website
during runtime, staticfiles will automatically store the mapping with
hashed names for all processed files in a file called staticfiles.json.
This happens once when you run the collectstatic management
command.
If a file isn’t found in the staticfiles.json manifest at runtime, a
ValueError is raised. This behavior can be disabled by subclassing
ManifestStaticFilesStorage and setting the manifest_strict attribute to
False – nonexistent paths will remain unchanged.
Due to the requirement of running collectstatic, this storage
typically shouldn’t be used when running tests as collectstatic isn’t run
as part of the normal test setup. During testing, ensure that the
STATICFILES_STORAGE setting is set to something else like
'django.contrib.staticfiles.storage.StaticFilesStorage' (the default).
The method that is used when creating the hashed name of a file. Needs to return a hash for the given file name and content. By default it calculates a MD5 hash from the content’s chunks as mentioned above. Feel free to override this method to use your own hashing algorithm.
ManifestFilesMixin¶Use this mixin with a custom storage to append the MD5 hash of the file’s
content to the filename as ManifestStaticFilesStorage does.
staticfiles finders has a searched_locations attribute which is a list
of directory paths in which the finders searched. Example usage:
from django.contrib.staticfiles import finders
result = finders.find('css/base.css')
searched_locations = finders.searched_locations
There are a few other helpers outside of the
staticfiles app to work with static
files:
The django.template.context_processors.static() context processor
which adds STATIC_URL to every template context rendered
with RequestContext contexts.
The builtin template tag static which takes a path and urljoins it
with the static prefix STATIC_URL. If
django.contrib.staticfiles is installed, the tag uses the url()
method of the STATICFILES_STORAGE instead.
The builtin template tag get_static_prefix which populates a
template variable with the static prefix STATIC_URL to be
used as a variable or directly.
The similar template tag get_media_prefix which works like
get_static_prefix but uses MEDIA_URL.
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 function serves static files in development.
Warning
This view will only work if 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.
Note
To guess the served files’ content types, this view relies on the
mimetypes module from the Python standard library, which itself
relies on the underlying platform’s map files. If you find that this view
doesn’t return proper content types for certain files, it is most likely
that the platform’s map files are incorrect or need to be updated. This can
be achieved, for example, by installing or updating the mailcap package
on a Red Hat distribution, mime-support on a Debian distribution, or by
editing the keys under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT in the Windows registry.
This view is automatically enabled by runserver (with a
DEBUG setting set to True). To use the view with a different
local development server, add the following snippet to the end of your
primary URL configuration:
from django.conf import settings
from django.contrib.staticfiles import views
from django.urls import re_path
if settings.DEBUG:
urlpatterns += [
re_path(r'^static/(?P<path>.*)$', views.serve),
]
Note, the beginning of the pattern (r'^static/') should be your
STATIC_URL setting.
Since this is a bit finicky, there’s also a helper function that’ll do this for you:
This will return the proper URL pattern for serving static files to your already defined pattern list. Use it like this:
from django.contrib.staticfiles.urls import staticfiles_urlpatterns
# ... the rest of your URLconf here ...
urlpatterns += staticfiles_urlpatterns()
This will inspect your STATIC_URL setting and wire up the view
to serve static files accordingly. Don’t forget to set the
STATICFILES_DIRS setting appropriately to let
django.contrib.staticfiles know where to look for files in addition to
files in app directories.
Warning
This helper function will only work if DEBUG is True
and your STATIC_URL setting is neither empty nor a full
URL such as http://static.example.com/.
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.
This unittest TestCase subclass extends django.test.LiveServerTestCase.
Just like its parent, you can use it to write tests that involve running the code under test and consuming it with testing tools through HTTP (e.g. Selenium, PhantomJS, etc.), because of which it’s needed that the static assets are also published.
But given the fact that it makes use of the
django.contrib.staticfiles.views.serve() view described above, it can
transparently overlay at test execution-time the assets provided by the
staticfiles finders. This means you don’t need to run
collectstatic before or as a part of your tests setup.
Dec 25, 2023