Django Rest Framework – Missing Static Directory

I was unable to get any of the above solutions to work on our webapp, but discovered that if the app can connect to an S3 bucket where it can access deployed static files, django rest_framework works pretty seemlessly (as discussed here). Here’s the relevant code for our settings.py:

    aws = pcfenv.get_service(label='aws-s3') # or however you are accessing your s3 bucket & credentials

    if aws is not None:
        keys = aws.credentials
        AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID = keys["access_key_id"]
        AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY = keys["secret_access_key"]
        AWS_STORAGE_BUCKET_NAME = keys["bucket"]
        AWS_S3_CUSTOM_DOMAIN = '%s.s3.amazonaws.com' % AWS_STORAGE_BUCKET_NAME
        AWS_S3_OBJECT_PARAMETERS = {
            'CacheControl': 'max-age=86400',
        }
        AWS_LOCATION = 'static'
        STATICFILES_STORAGE = 'storages.backends.s3boto3.S3Boto3Storage'
        STATIC_URL = "https://%s/%s/" % (AWS_S3_CUSTOM_DOMAIN, AWS_LOCATION)
        DEFAULT_FILE_STORAGE = 'mysite.storage_backends.MediaStorage'

    # static files
    STATIC_URL = '/static/'
    STATIC_ROOT = 'static/'

    # local storage
    MEDIA_ROOT = os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'media')
    MEDIA_URL = '/media/uploads/'

You’ll need to pip install the boto3 and django-storages dependencies for it all to work.

First, You need to set static url and static root in django settings.py

STATIC_URL = '/static/'
STATIC_ROOT = os.path.join(BASE_DIR, "static") 

Then collect all static files

python manage.py collectstatic

If you’re using Heroku to serve your website, try this link. It worked for me.
https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/django-assets

In Summary:

1. Make a static folder if you don’t have one already. (put it on the same level as your manage.py file)
2. Add the Python package to the folder (Copy this folder into the static folder –> C:Python37_64Libsite-packagesrest_framework)
3. Add the code below to your project.

settings.py

...

BASE_DIR = os.path.dirname(os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__)))

...

MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES = (
# Simplified static file serving.
# https://warehouse.python.org/project/whitenoise/
'whitenoise.middleware.WhiteNoiseMiddleware',

...

# Static files (CSS, JavaScript, Images)
# https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.9/howto/static-files/
STATIC_ROOT = os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'staticfiles')
STATIC_URL = '/static/'

# Extra places for collectstatic to find static files.
STATICFILES_DIRS = (os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'static'),)

# Simplified static file serving.
# https://warehouse.python.org/project/whitenoise/
STATICFILES_STORAGE = 'whitenoise.storage.CompressedManifestStaticFilesStorage'

requirements.txt

...
#add whotrnoise to requirements
whitenoise

In my case I was relying on Gunicorn to run the server.
I tried updating my settings.py file by following the above threads but unfortunately nothing seemed to work for me.

In the end I scratched my head around DRF docs specially this part https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/howto/static-files/

I managed to solve this problem by updating by urls.py as following.

from django.contrib import admin
from django.urls import path, include
from django.conf import settings
from django.conf.urls.static import static

urlpatterns = [
    path('admin/', admin.site.urls), 
] + static(settings.STATIC_URL, document_root=settings.STATIC_ROOT)

Then updating my settings.py as follows.

BASE_DIR = os.path.dirname(os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__)))
STATIC_URL = '/static/'

STATIC_ROOT = os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'staticfiles')

And now execute => python manage.py collectstatic

I did this tens of times and I was going insane over it. I had DEBUG = False.

you need both:

REST_FRAMEWORK = {
    # Use hyperlinked styles by default.
    # Only used if the `serializer_class` attribute is not set on a view.
    'DEFAULT_MODEL_SERIALIZER_CLASS':
        'rest_framework.serializers.HyperlinkedModelSerializer',

    # Use Django's standard `django.contrib.auth` permissions,
    # or allow read-only access for unauthenticated users.
    'DEFAULT_PERMISSION_CLASSES': [
        'rest_framework.permissions.DjangoModelPermissionsOrAnonReadOnly'
    ]
} 

and

the

python manage.py collectstatic

with the relevant directories set up.

the latter without the former won’t do the work.

In debug mode, no changes are required.

If you are in a production environment, you need to set the static files point, usually set in nginx

location /static {
    alias /<your app>/static; # your Django project's static files - amend as required
}

I had the same issue when I started learning python. I fixed by making below changes in settings.py of my project

DEBUG = True