| ========================= |
| How to serve static files |
| ========================= |
| |
| .. module:: django.views.static |
| :synopsis: Serving of static files during development. |
| |
| Django itself doesn't serve static (media) files, such as images, style sheets, |
| or video. It leaves that job to whichever Web server you choose. |
| |
| The reasoning here is that standard Web servers, such as Apache_, lighttpd_ and |
| Cherokee_, are much more fine-tuned at serving static files than a Web |
| application framework. |
| |
| With that said, Django does support static files **during development**. You can |
| use the :func:`django.views.static.serve` view to serve media files. |
| |
| .. _Apache: http://httpd.apache.org/ |
| .. _lighttpd: http://www.lighttpd.net/ |
| .. _Cherokee: http://www.cherokee-project.com/ |
| |
| .. seealso:: |
| |
| If you just need to serve the admin media from a nonstandard location, see |
| the :djadminopt:`--adminmedia` parameter to :djadmin:`runserver`. |
| |
| The big, fat disclaimer |
| ======================= |
| |
| Using this method is **inefficient** and **insecure**. Do not use this in a |
| production setting. Use this only for development. |
| |
| For information on serving static files in an Apache production environment, |
| see the :ref:`Django mod_python documentation <serving-media-files>`. |
| |
| How to do it |
| ============ |
| |
| Here's the formal definition of the :func:`~django.views.static.serve` view: |
| |
| .. function:: def serve(request, path, document_root, show_indexes=False) |
| |
| To use it, just put this in your :doc:`URLconf </topics/http/urls>`:: |
| |
| (r'^site_media/(?P<path>.*)$', 'django.views.static.serve', |
| {'document_root': '/path/to/media'}), |
| |
| ...where ``site_media`` is the URL where your media will be rooted, and |
| ``/path/to/media`` is the filesystem root for your media. This will call the |
| :func:`~django.views.static.serve` view, passing in the path from the URLconf |
| and the (required) ``document_root`` parameter. |
| |
| Given the above URLconf: |
| |
| * The file ``/path/to/media/foo.jpg`` will be made available at the URL |
| ``/site_media/foo.jpg``. |
| |
| * The file ``/path/to/media/css/mystyles.css`` will be made available |
| at the URL ``/site_media/css/mystyles.css``. |
| |
| * The file ``/path/bar.jpg`` will not be accessible, because it doesn't |
| fall under the document root. |
| |
| Of course, it's not compulsory to use a fixed string for the |
| ``'document_root'`` value. You might wish to make that an entry in your |
| settings file and use the setting value there. That will allow you and |
| other developers working on the code to easily change the value as |
| required. For example, if we have a line in ``settings.py`` that says:: |
| |
| STATIC_DOC_ROOT = '/path/to/media' |
| |
| ...we could write the above :doc:`URLconf </topics/http/urls>` entry as:: |
| |
| from django.conf import settings |
| ... |
| (r'^site_media/(?P<path>.*)$', 'django.views.static.serve', |
| {'document_root': settings.STATIC_DOC_ROOT}), |
| |
| Be careful not to use the same path as your :setting:`ADMIN_MEDIA_PREFIX` (which defaults |
| to ``/media/``) as this will overwrite your URLconf entry. |
| |
| Directory listings |
| ================== |
| |
| Optionally, you can pass the ``show_indexes`` parameter to the |
| :func:`~django.views.static.serve` view. This is ``False`` by default. If it's |
| ``True``, Django will display file listings for directories. |
| |
| For example:: |
| |
| (r'^site_media/(?P<path>.*)$', 'django.views.static.serve', |
| {'document_root': '/path/to/media', 'show_indexes': True}), |
| |
| You can customize the index view by creating a template called |
| ``static/directory_index.html``. That template gets two objects in its context: |
| |
| * ``directory`` -- the directory name (a string) |
| * ``file_list`` -- a list of file names (as strings) in the directory |
| |
| Here's the default ``static/directory_index.html`` template: |
| |
| .. code-block:: html+django |
| |
| <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> |
| <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> |
| <head> |
| <meta http-equiv="Content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /> |
| <meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-us" /> |
| <meta name="robots" content="NONE,NOARCHIVE" /> |
| <title>Index of {{ directory }}</title> |
| </head> |
| <body> |
| <h1>Index of {{ directory }}</h1> |
| <ul> |
| {% for f in file_list %} |
| <li><a href="{{ f }}">{{ f }}</a></li> |
| {% endfor %} |
| </ul> |
| </body> |
| </html> |
| |
| .. versionchanged:: 1.0.3 |
| Prior to Django 1.0.3, there was a bug in the view that provided directory |
| listings. The template that was loaded had to be called |
| ``static/directory_listing`` (with no ``.html`` extension). For backwards |
| compatibility with earlier versions, Django will still load templates with |
| the older (no extension) name, but it will prefer the |
| ``directory_index.html`` version. |
| |
| Limiting use to DEBUG=True |
| ========================== |
| |
| Because URLconfs are just plain Python modules, you can use Python logic to |
| make the static-media view available only in development mode. This is a handy |
| trick to make sure the static-serving view doesn't slip into a production |
| setting by mistake. |
| |
| Do this by wrapping an ``if DEBUG`` statement around the |
| :func:`django.views.static.serve` inclusion. Here's a full example URLconf:: |
| |
| from django.conf.urls.defaults import * |
| from django.conf import settings |
| |
| urlpatterns = patterns('', |
| (r'^articles/2003/$', 'news.views.special_case_2003'), |
| (r'^articles/(?P<year>\d{4})/$', 'news.views.year_archive'), |
| (r'^articles/(?P<year>\d{4})/(?P<month>\d{2})/$', 'news.views.month_archive'), |
| (r'^articles/(?P<year>\d{4})/(?P<month>\d{2})/(?P<day>\d+)/$', 'news.views.article_detail'), |
| ) |
| |
| if settings.DEBUG: |
| urlpatterns += patterns('', |
| (r'^site_media/(?P<path>.*)$', 'django.views.static.serve', {'document_root': '/path/to/media'}), |
| ) |
| |
| This code is straightforward. It imports the settings and checks the value of |
| the :setting:`DEBUG` setting. If it evaluates to ``True``, then ``site_media`` |
| will be associated with the ``django.views.static.serve`` view. If not, then the |
| view won't be made available. |
| |
| Of course, the catch here is that you'll have to remember to set ``DEBUG=False`` |
| in your production settings file. But you should be doing that anyway. |