The staticfiles appLink to this heading#

collectstaticLink to this heading#

django-admin collectstaticLink to this definition#

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 CachedStaticFilesStorage 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(MyStaticFilesStorage, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)

Then set the STATICFILES_STORAGE setting to 'path.to.MyStaticFilesStorage'.

Some commonly used options are:

--noinput, --no-inputLink to this definition#

Do NOT prompt the user for input of any kind.

--ignore PATTERN, -i PATTERNLink to this definition#

Ignore files or directories matching this glob-style pattern. Use multiple times to ignore more.

--dry-run, -nLink to this definition#

Do everything except modify the filesystem.

--clear, -cLink to this definition#

Clear the existing files before trying to copy or link the original file.

--link, -lLink to this definition#

Create a symbolic link to each file instead of copying.

--no-post-processLink to this definition#

Don’t call the post_process() method of the configured STATICFILES_STORAGE storage backend.

--no-default-ignoreLink to this definition#

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

from django.contrib.staticfiles.apps import StaticFilesConfig

class MyStaticFilesConfig(StaticFilesConfig):
    ignore_patterns = [...]  # your custom ignore list

findstaticLink to this heading#

django-admin findstatic staticfile [staticfile ...]Link to this definition#

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

findstatic --firstLink to this definition#

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

runserverLink to this heading#

django-admin runserver [addrport]Link to this definition#

Overrides the core runserver command if the staticfiles app is installed and adds automatic serving of static files and the following new options.

--nostaticLink to this definition#

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

--insecureLink to this definition#

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. runserver --insecure doesn’t work with CachedStaticFilesStorage.

Example usage:

django-admin runserver --insecure

StaticFilesStorageLink to this heading#

class storage.StaticFilesStorageLink to this definition#

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.

storage.StaticFilesStorage.post_process(paths, **options)Link to this definition#

This method is 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.

The CachedStaticFilesStorage uses this behind the scenes to replace the paths with their hashed counterparts and update the cache appropriately.

ManifestStaticFilesStorageLink to this heading#

class storage.ManifestStaticFilesStorageLink to this definition#

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");

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.

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).

storage.ManifestStaticFilesStorage.file_hash(name, content=None)Link to this definition#

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.

CachedStaticFilesStorageLink to this heading#

class storage.CachedStaticFilesStorageLink to this definition#

CachedStaticFilesStorage is a similar class like the ManifestStaticFilesStorage class but uses Django’s caching framework for storing the hashed names of processed files instead of a static manifest file called staticfiles.json. This is mostly useful for situations in which you don’t have access to the file system.

If you want to override certain options of the cache backend the storage uses, simply specify a custom entry in the CACHES setting named 'staticfiles'. It falls back to using the 'default' cache backend.

Static file development viewLink to this heading#

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.

views.serve(request, path)Link to this definition#

This view function serves static files in development.

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

if settings.DEBUG:
    urlpatterns += [
        url(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:

urls.staticfiles_urlpatterns()Link to this definition#

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.

Specialized test case to support «live testing»Link to this heading#

class testing.StaticLiveServerTestCaseLink to this definition#

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.