.. _howto-static-files:

=========================
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_ and lighttpd_,
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/

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 :ref:`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 :ref:`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}),

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 a 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.
