Differences Between Staticfiles_Dir, Static_Root and Media_Root

Differences between STATICFILES_DIR, STATIC_ROOT and MEDIA_ROOT

You can find these settings in the Django documentation. Here are my own definitions and quotations from the documentation:

• MEDIA_ROOT is the folder where files uploaded using FileField will go.

  Absolute filesystem path to the directory that will hold user-uploaded files.

• STATIC_ROOT is the folder where static files will be stored after using manage.py collectstatic

  The absolute path to the directory where collectstatic will collect static files for deployment.

  If the staticfiles contrib app is enabled (default) the collectstatic management command will collect static files into this directory. See the howto on managing static files for more details about usage.

• STATICFILES_DIRS is the list of folders where Django will search for additional static files aside from the static folder of each app installed.

  This setting defines the additional locations the staticfiles app will traverse if the FileSystemFinder finder is enabled, e.g. if you use the collectstatic or findstatic management command or use the static file serving view.

In your settings, you should have:

MEDIA_ROOT = os.path.join(BASE_DIR, "media/")
STATIC_ROOT = os.path.join(BASE_DIR, "static/")

# Make a tuple of strings instead of a string
STATICFILES_DIRS = ("/home/user/project/django1/top/listing/static", )

...where:

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

as defined in the default Django settings.py now.

The real difference between MEDIA_ROOT (media files) and STATIC_ROOT (static files) in python django and how to use them correctly

Understanding the real difference between MEDIA_ROOT and STATIC_ROOT can be confusing sometimes as both of them are related to serving files.

To be clear about their differences, I could point out their uses and types of files they serve.

1. STATIC_ROOT, STATIC_URL and STATICFILES_DIRS are all used to serve the static files required for the website or application. Whereas, MEDIA_URL and MEDIA_ROOT are used to serve the media files uploaded by a user.

As you can see that the main difference lies between media and static files. So, let's differentiate them.

1. Static files are files like CSS, JS, JQuery, scss, and other images(PNG, JPG, SVG, etc. )etc. which are used in development, creation and rendering of your website or application. Whereas, media files are those files that are uploaded by the user while using the website.

So, if there is a JavaScript file named main.js which is used to give some functionalities like show popup on button click then it is a STATIC file. Similarly, images like website logo, or some static images displayed in the website that the user can't change by any action are also STATIC files.

Hence, files(as mentioned above) that are used during the development and rendering of the website are known as STATIC files and are served by STATIC_ROOT, STATIC_URL or STATICFILES_DIRS(during deployment) in Django.

Now for the MEDIA files: any file that the user uploads, for example; a video, or image or excel file, etc. during the normal usage of the website or application are called MEDIA files in Django.

MEDIA_ROOT and MEDIA_URL are used to point out the location of MEDIA files stored in your application.

Hope this makes you clear.

STATICFILES_DIRS setting makes my admin widget override disappear

I figured out the cause of my issue. I missed this portion in the Django documentation that explains STATICFILES_FINDERS: STATICFILES_STORAGE Documentation

It turns out that my production server was finding the static files in my outer root folder first, which were not up to date. This explains why I wasn't seeing my changes. I'm going to reconfigure the way I handle static files to ensure that the outer root static folder that my production server looks always has the latest static files via the collectstatic feature

Mapping two MEDIA_URLs to the same MEDIA_ROOT

I'm sure you already know that static/media files should be served using a frontend server (like Nginx), because it's been mentioned at so many places in the docs.

So, if Django doesn't serve the files, why does it need the MEDIA_ROOT and MEDIA_URL settings?

MEDIA_ROOT is the place where Django stores the images/files you upload.

MEDIA_URL is used by Django to generate file urls. For example, if MEDIA_URL = '/media/', then if you do {{ image.url }}, Django will generate a url like this - /media/image.jpg.

But Django doesn't serve the files. Your frontend server does. So, what you do is, you configure your frontend server like this:

if request path starts with /media/:
    map it to <media directory>

Basically, you're telling your frontend server to serve content from the <media directory> for every request that starts with /media/. This way, a request starting with /media/ never actually reaches your Django app, because your server is taking care of them.

What I mean by all this is that you can configure your frontend server to map /wp-content/uploads/ to your <media directory> and it will serve the files.

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