Django: how do you serve media / stylesheets and link to them within templates
Question:
Variations of this question have been asked, but I’m still unable to get my stylesheets to load correctly when my templates are rendered.
I’m attempting to serve static media from the Django process during development – which is strongly discouraged in production, I’m aware. I’ll post my configuration and my template, and hopefully someone can help me to understand where I’m going wrong.
Note that I did try to follow the example on the Django project website, however it doesn’t mention how to refer to your stylesheets from a template. I’ve also tried many different variations of the same thing, so my code/settings may be a little off from what’s described.
settings.py
MEDIA_ROOT = 'D:/Dev Tools/django_projects/dso/media'
MEDIA_URL = '/media/'
ADMIN_MEDIA_PREFIX = '/media/'
urls.py
from django.conf.urls.defaults import *
from django.conf import settings
from django.contrib import admin
admin.autodiscover()
urlpatterns = patterns('',
(r'^admin/(.*)', admin.site.root),
(r'^ovramt/$', 'dso.ovramt.views.index'),
)
if settings.DEBUG:
urlpatterns += patterns('',
(r'^media/(?P<path>.*)$', 'django.views.static.serve', {'document_root': settings.MEDIA_ROOT}),
)
Within my template:
<head>
<title> {% block title %} DSO Template {% endblock %} </title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" >
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../media/styles.css">
</head>
I assure you, the files (templates/media) are in the correct directory on my file system. If there’s any extra information I need to provide, please post a comment.
Edit:
One of the problems I was having was the use of a ‘/’ prepending my links. If the forward slash is prepended, the link is opened from the root of the site. If there is no forward slash, the link is opened in the current level. An example:
www.example.com/application/ has a link “/app2/ and a link “app3/”.
app2 will open at www.example.com/app2/ and app3 will open at www.example.com/application/app3/. This was confusing me I think.
Answers:
I’ve got a couple of ideas, I don’t know which one of them is working for me 🙂
Make sure to use a trailing slash, and to have this be different from the MEDIA_URL setting (since the same URL cannot be mapped onto two different sets of files).
That’s from http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/settings/#admin-media-prefix
Secondly, it may be that you’re confusing directories on your filesystem with url paths. Try using absolute urls, and then refine them down.
I just use absolute naming. Unless you’re running the site in a deep path (or even if you are), I’d drop the .. and go for something like:
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/media/styles.css">
I usually make my own Template simple tag because Django isn’t giving CSS/JavaScript files. Apache does it so my media url is usually http://static.mysite.com.
yourApp/templatetags/media_url.py:
from django.template import Library
from yourapp.settings import MEDIA_URL
register = Library()
@register.simple_tag
def media_url():
return MEDIA_URL
And in my template file:
{% load media_url %}
<link href="{{ media_url }}css/main.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
You could also make your own context preprocessor to add the media_url variable in every template.
I just had to figure this out myself.
settings.py:
MEDIA_ROOT = 'C:/Server/Projects/project_name/static/'
MEDIA_URL = '/static/'
ADMIN_MEDIA_PREFIX = '/media/'
urls.py:
from django.conf import settings
...
if settings.DEBUG:
urlpatterns += patterns('',
(r'^static/(?P<path>.*)$', 'django.views.static.serve', {'document_root': settings.MEDIA_ROOT}),
)
template file:
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/static/css/style.css" />
With the file located here:
"C:/Server/Projects/project_name/static/css/style.css"
Just thought I’d chime in quickly. While all the propositions here work just fine, and I do use Ty’s example while developing, once you hit production you might want to opt to serve files via a straight Apache, or whichever else server you’re using.
What I do is I setup a subdomain once I’m done developing, and replace all links to static media. For instance:
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://static.mydomain.com/css/style.css" />
The reasons for doing this are two-fold. First, it just seems like it would be slower to have Django handle these requests when it’s not needed. Second, since most browsers can actually download files simultaneously from 3 different domains, using a second sub-domain for your static files will actually speed up the download speed of your users.
Django already has a context process for MEDIA_URL, see Django’s documentation.
It should be availbale by default (unless you’ve customized CONTEXT_PROCESSORS and forgot to add it) in a RequestContext.
Another thing to add is that if you have a separate media server on a subdomain/different domain, you can disable cookies for your static media. Saves a little processing and bandwidth.
Variations of this question have been asked, but I’m still unable to get my stylesheets to load correctly when my templates are rendered.
I’m attempting to serve static media from the Django process during development – which is strongly discouraged in production, I’m aware. I’ll post my configuration and my template, and hopefully someone can help me to understand where I’m going wrong.
Note that I did try to follow the example on the Django project website, however it doesn’t mention how to refer to your stylesheets from a template. I’ve also tried many different variations of the same thing, so my code/settings may be a little off from what’s described.
settings.py
MEDIA_ROOT = 'D:/Dev Tools/django_projects/dso/media'
MEDIA_URL = '/media/'
ADMIN_MEDIA_PREFIX = '/media/'
urls.py
from django.conf.urls.defaults import *
from django.conf import settings
from django.contrib import admin
admin.autodiscover()
urlpatterns = patterns('',
(r'^admin/(.*)', admin.site.root),
(r'^ovramt/$', 'dso.ovramt.views.index'),
)
if settings.DEBUG:
urlpatterns += patterns('',
(r'^media/(?P<path>.*)$', 'django.views.static.serve', {'document_root': settings.MEDIA_ROOT}),
)
Within my template:
<head>
<title> {% block title %} DSO Template {% endblock %} </title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" >
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../media/styles.css">
</head>
I assure you, the files (templates/media) are in the correct directory on my file system. If there’s any extra information I need to provide, please post a comment.
Edit:
One of the problems I was having was the use of a ‘/’ prepending my links. If the forward slash is prepended, the link is opened from the root of the site. If there is no forward slash, the link is opened in the current level. An example:
www.example.com/application/ has a link “/app2/ and a link “app3/”.
app2 will open at www.example.com/app2/ and app3 will open at www.example.com/application/app3/. This was confusing me I think.
I’ve got a couple of ideas, I don’t know which one of them is working for me 🙂
Make sure to use a trailing slash, and to have this be different from the MEDIA_URL setting (since the same URL cannot be mapped onto two different sets of files).
That’s from http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/settings/#admin-media-prefix
Secondly, it may be that you’re confusing directories on your filesystem with url paths. Try using absolute urls, and then refine them down.
I just use absolute naming. Unless you’re running the site in a deep path (or even if you are), I’d drop the .. and go for something like:
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/media/styles.css">
I usually make my own Template simple tag because Django isn’t giving CSS/JavaScript files. Apache does it so my media url is usually http://static.mysite.com.
yourApp/templatetags/media_url.py:
from django.template import Library
from yourapp.settings import MEDIA_URL
register = Library()
@register.simple_tag
def media_url():
return MEDIA_URL
And in my template file:
{% load media_url %}
<link href="{{ media_url }}css/main.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
You could also make your own context preprocessor to add the media_url variable in every template.
I just had to figure this out myself.
settings.py:
MEDIA_ROOT = 'C:/Server/Projects/project_name/static/'
MEDIA_URL = '/static/'
ADMIN_MEDIA_PREFIX = '/media/'
urls.py:
from django.conf import settings
...
if settings.DEBUG:
urlpatterns += patterns('',
(r'^static/(?P<path>.*)$', 'django.views.static.serve', {'document_root': settings.MEDIA_ROOT}),
)
template file:
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/static/css/style.css" />
With the file located here:
"C:/Server/Projects/project_name/static/css/style.css"
Just thought I’d chime in quickly. While all the propositions here work just fine, and I do use Ty’s example while developing, once you hit production you might want to opt to serve files via a straight Apache, or whichever else server you’re using.
What I do is I setup a subdomain once I’m done developing, and replace all links to static media. For instance:
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://static.mydomain.com/css/style.css" />
The reasons for doing this are two-fold. First, it just seems like it would be slower to have Django handle these requests when it’s not needed. Second, since most browsers can actually download files simultaneously from 3 different domains, using a second sub-domain for your static files will actually speed up the download speed of your users.
Django already has a context process for MEDIA_URL, see Django’s documentation.
It should be availbale by default (unless you’ve customized CONTEXT_PROCESSORS and forgot to add it) in a RequestContext.
Another thing to add is that if you have a separate media server on a subdomain/different domain, you can disable cookies for your static media. Saves a little processing and bandwidth.