Question:

I'm stuck due to <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8618611/serving-django-static-files-in-development-envirnoment" rel="nofollow">an</a> <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5602263/serving-static-files-for-development-mode-in-django" rel="nofollow">evergreen</a> <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10806287/serving-static-files-in-django-development" rel="nofollow">issue</a>, static files not served. Conversely the files placed in the MEDIA_ROOT subtree get served correctly under MEDIA_URL.

Stripped settings.py:

DEBUG = True STATIC_URL = '/static/' STATIC_ROOT = '/home/foo/devel/static' MEDIA_URL = '/media/' MEDIA_ROOT = '/home/foo/devel/media' # the following is deprecated but is it seems grappelly requires it ADMIN_MEDIA_PREFIX = STATIC_URL + "grappelli/" STATIC_FILES = () STATICFILES_FINDERS = ( 'django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.FileSystemFinder', 'django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.AppDirectoriesFinder', )

To create the project I did:

$ cd /home/foo/devel/ $ virtualenv testdrive $ . bin/activate; pip install django; cd testdrive $ django-admin.py fbtest

and got this directory tree (stripped):

. <-- /home/foo/devel/ ├── bin ├── fbtest │   └── fbtest │   ├── media │   │   └── foo.jpg │   ├── static │ └────── foo.jpg ├── include └── lib

Files under STATIC_URL should be served automatically by Django staticfiles (not in my case), while other files have to be handled manually. So I appended these lines to urls.py:

import settings if settings.DEBUG: urlpatterns += patterns('', url(r'^%s(?P<path>.*)$' % settings.MEDIA_URL.lstrip("/"), 'django.views.static.serve', { 'document_root': settings.MEDIA_ROOT, }), )

Accessing http://host/media/filebrowser/foo.jpg works, while http://host/static/foo.jpg gives error 404. Why?

<blockquote>

Files under STATIC_URL should be served automatically by Django staticfiles (not in my case), while other files have to be handled manually.

</blockquote>

That's incorrect. Django never serves STATIC_ROOT ever -- not even in development. What it <em>does</em> do is make files in each app's "static" directory and files in any directory specified in STATICFILES_DIRS available at STATIC_URL. You don't actually manually put anything in STATIC_ROOT ever; in fact, in development, you shouldn't even have the directory there. Put simply, STATIC_ROOT is only a dumping ground for your static files <em>in production</em> when you run the collectstatic management command.

In development, all static files should go into someapp/static, where "someapp" is the app they apply to. In the case that the files apply to the project as a whole, a global CSS file for example, you need to create an entirely different directory (i.e. <em>not</em> the same as STATIC_ROOT or MEDIA_ROOT) and then add that directory to STATICFILES_DIRS. For example, I normally call mine "assets", so:

STATICFILES_DIRS = ( os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), 'assets'), )

It was a silly error. I forgot to add fbtest to INSTALLED_APPS, so the static file machinery didn't manage static files for this app.

This problem is realy evergreen... Some hints:

TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS = ( # ... 'django.core.context_processors.static', # ... ) INSTALLED_APPS = ( # ... 'django.contrib.staticfiles', # ... ) <ul><li>Did you use? <a href="https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/contrib/staticfiles/#django-admin-collectstatic" rel="nofollow">django-admin-collectstatic</a> command?</li> <li>Can you help add <a href="https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/howto/static-files/#django.views.static.serve" rel="nofollow">show_indexes=True</a> in url settings?</li> <li>Some symbolic link?</li> <li>Run app with --adminmedia=../grappelli/static/grappelli arg.?</li> </ul>

My settings for django 1.4 (no grappelli):

urls.py

if settings.DEBUG: urlpatterns = patterns('', url(r'^%s(?P<path>.*)$' % settings.STATIC_URL.lstrip('/'), 'django.views.static.serve', {'document_root': settings.STATIC_ROOT, "show_indexes": True}), url(r'^%s(?P<path>.*)$' % settings.MEDIA_URL.lstrip('/'), 'django.views.static.serve', {'document_root': settings.MEDIA_ROOT, "show_indexes": True}), ) + urlpatterns

settings.py

MEDIA_ROOT = os.path.join(PROJECT_DIR, 'media') STATIC_ROOT = os.path.join(PROJECT_DIR, 'static') MEDIA_URL = '/media/' STATIC_URL = '/static/' ADMIN_MEDIA_PREFIX = '/static/admin/' TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS = ( # ... 'django.core.context_processors.static', # ... ) INSTALLED_APPS = ( # ... # 'django.contrib.staticfiles', # ... )