Javascript with Django?

Question

I know this has been asked before, but I\'m having a hard time setting up JS on my Django web app, even though I\'m reading the documentation.

I\'m running the Django de

Answer 1

For my development work, I use Django's built-in server, but I read the media files from the same directory as they would be in production (/srv/nginx/sitename/media/). So I clone the exact directory structure of my production server on my computer at home, letting me seamlessly push changes to production without having to change anything.

I keep two different settings.py files, though. My home settings.py file has my local database settings, a different MEDIA_URL setting, and DEBUG set to True. I use this in my URLs file to enable the server view for local media (since I don't run nginx on my home computer).

In urls.py:

if settings.DEBUG:
    urlpatterns += patterns('',
        (r'^media/(?P<path>.*)$', 'django.views.static.serve',
            {'document_root': settings.MEDIA_ROOT}),
    )

From settings.py (note, MEDIA_ROOT must be an absolute path):

# Absolute path to the directory that holds media.
# Example: "/home/media/media.lawrence.com/"
MEDIA_ROOT = '/srv/nginx/<sitename>/media/'

# URL that handles the media served from MEDIA_ROOT. Make sure to use a
# trailing slash if there is a path component (optional in other cases).
# Examples: "http://media.lawrence.com", "http://example.com/media/"
MEDIA_URL = 'http://127.0.0.1:8000/media/'

TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS = (
    # I've taken out my other processors for this example
    "django.core.context_processors.media",
)

In a template:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="{{ MEDIA_URL }}css/form.css" />{% endblock %}

Filesystems:

/srv/nginx/<sitename>
    /media  <-- MEDIA_ROOT/MEDIA_URL points to here
        /css
            base.css
            form.css
        /img
        /js

---

Oh, also: if that's a direct copy from your urls.py file, you forgot a comma after your serve view, that's causing your TypeError ;)

Answer 2

But does that /media/ global directory exist? And have you placed in there a scripts subdirectories with the scripts you want to serve from there? What about the /scripts/... url from which you want to serve JQuery.js -- that doesn't seem to be served anywhere from your urls.py. If you (for whatever reason) want to serve scripts (or any other statically served file) from several different URL paths, all of those URL paths need to be matched in urls.py with the static-serving -- or else, do the normal things and serve them all from the /media/... root URL, and map that media root to the dir where you actually keep these files (in their respective subdirs, typically).

Django's docs about static serving (for development only, since it's documented as

Using this method is inefficient and insecure. Do not use this in a production setting. Use this only for development.

so beware!-) seems pretty clear to me.