Serve Django Media Files via Nginx (Django/React/Nginx/Docker-Compose) - django

Question

Context
I have a single page web app using the following stack:
React for the frontend
Django for the backend
Nginx for the webserver
The web application is dockerized using docker-compose. My React app, fetches data from the Django server (django is built as an api endpoint using Django Rest Framework).
Question/Problem
I am having an issue on deployment where I am unable to serve my media files via Nginx.
What have I tried so far
My initial thought was to serve the media files as shown on this stackoverflow post - which is pretty straight forward. Though, since Nginx runs in its own docker (and so does my django server), I unable to point to my django media files since they are in different containers.
Ideally, I would not want to use webpack, and have Nginx take care of serving media files.
If you look at the nginx Dockerfile below, you will see that I am copying my static files into /usr/share/nginx/html/static/staticfiles to then serve them using nginx (see location ^~ /static/ in nginx.conf). I have tried to do the same thing for my media file (as a test) and it works - though, all the files I am uploding once the site is up are not accessible since the copy happens when I build my container.
File Structure
Root Dirc
|__ docker-compose.yml
|__ backend
|__ root
|__ Project
|__ api
|__ models.py
|__ ...
|__ media
|__ teddycrepineau
|__ settings.py
|__ ...
|__ production
|__ Dockerfile
|__ nginx
|__ Dockerfile
|__ nginx.conf
|__ frontend
|__ ...
Relevant Code
docker-compose.yml
version: '3'
volumes:
postgres_data: {}
postgres_backup: {}
services:
postgres:
image: postgres
volumes:
- postgres_data:/var/lib/postgresql/data
- postgres_backup:/backups
env_file: .env
nginx:
container_name: nginx
build:
context: .
dockerfile: ./nginx/Dockerfile
image: nginx
restart: always
depends_on:
- django
ports:
- "80:80"
django:
container_name: django
build:
context: backend
dockerfile: ./root/production/Dockerfile
hostname: django
ports:
- 8000:8000
volumes:
- ./backend:/app/
depends_on:
- postgres
command: >
bash -c '
python3 ./root/manage.py makemigrations &&
python3 ./root/manage.py migrate &&
python3 ./root/manage.py initadmin &&
gunicorn teddycrepineau.wsgi -b 0.0.0.0:8000 --chdir=./root/'
env_file: .env
nginx.conf
user nginx;
worker_processes 1;
error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log warn;
pid /var/run/nginx.pid;
events {
worker_connections 1024;
}
http {
include /etc/nginx/mime.types;
default_type application/octet-stream;
log_format main '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] "$request" '
'$status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" '
'"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"';
access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log main;
upstream app {
server django:8000;
}
server {
listen 80 default_server;
listen [::]:80 default_server;
server_name 0.0.0.0;
charset utf-80;
root /usr/share/nginx/html;
index index.html;
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ #proxy_to_app;
}
location #proxy_to_app {
rewrite ^(.+)$ /index.html last;
}
location ^~ /static/ {
autoindex on;
alias /usr/share/nginx/html/static/;
}
location ~ ^/api {
proxy_pass http://django:8000;
}
location ~ ^/admin {
proxy_pass http://django:8000;
}
}
}
nginx Dockerfile
FROM nginx:latest
ADD ./nginx/nginx.conf /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
COPY ./frontend/build /usr/share/nginx/html
COPY ./backend/root/staticfiles /usr/share/nginx/html/static/staticfiles
Django Dockerfile
FROM python:3.7
ENV PYTHONUNBUFFERED 1
RUN export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
RUN mkdir /app
RUN pip install --upgrade pip
ADD /root/requirements.txt /app/
WORKDIR /app/
ADD . /app/
RUN pip install -r requirements.txt
EXPOSE 8000
Django settings.py
BASE_DIR = os.path.dirname(os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__)))
APPS_DIR = os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'project')
....
MEDIA_URL = '/media/'
MEDIA_ROOT = os.path.join(APPS_DIR, 'media/')
Django urls.py
urlpatterns = [
path('admin/', admin.site.urls),
re_path(r'^api/', include('project.api.urls')),
path('summernote/', include('django_summernote.urls')),
]
urlpatterns += static(settings.MEDIA_URL, document_root=settings.MEDIA_ROOT)
Update
When I mount a shared volum and reference it in my nginx.conf I get a 404 page not found when trying to access the image uploaded in the django backend.
docker-compose.yml
version: '3'
volumes:
postgres_data: {}
postgres_backup: {}
services:
postgres:
image: postgres
volumes:
- postgres_data:/var/lib/postgresql/data
- postgres_backup:/backups
env_file: .env
nginx:
container_name: nginx
build:
context: .
dockerfile: ./nginx/Dockerfile
image: nginx
restart: always
depends_on:
- django
ports:
- "80:80"
volumes:
- ./static:/app/backend/root/staticfiles
- ./media:/app/backend/root/project/media
django:
container_name: django
build:
context: backend
dockerfile: ./root/production/Dockerfile
hostname: django
ports:
- 8000:8000
volumes:
- ./backend:/app/
- ./static:/app/backend/root/staticfiles
- ./media:/app/backend/root/project/media
depends_on:
- postgres
command: >
bash -c '
python3 ./root/manage.py collectstatic --no-input &&
python3 ./root/manage.py makemigrations &&
python3 ./root/manage.py migrate &&
python3 ./root/manage.py initadmin &&
gunicorn teddycrepineau.wsgi -b 0.0.0.0:8000 --chdir=./root/'
env_file: .env
nginx.conf
user nginx;
worker_processes 1;
error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log warn;
pid /var/run/nginx.pid;
events {
worker_connections 1024;
}
http {
include /etc/nginx/mime.types;
default_type application/octet-stream;
log_format main '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] "$request" '
'$status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" '
'"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"';
access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log main;
upstream app {
server django:8000;
}
server {
listen 80 default_server;
listen [::]:80 default_server;
server_name localhost;
charset utf-80;
root /usr/share/nginx/html;
index index.html;
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ #proxy_to_app;
}
location #proxy_to_app {
rewrite ^(.+)$ /index.html last;
}
location ^~ /static/ {
autoindex on;
alias /usr/share/nginx/html/static/;
}
location ^~ /media/ {
autoindex on;
alias /app/backend/root/project/media/;
}
location ~ ^/api {
proxy_pass http://django:8000;
}
location ~ ^/admin {
proxy_pass http://django:8000;
}
}
}

Answer 1

The problem came from the way I mounted my volumes in the docker-compose.yml (it was a miss understanding from my part).
First, we create a host mounted volume (./backend/) referencing our /app/ folder that exist in our django service. We created this folder and added all the relevant files in our Dockerfile located in the backend folder. This will basically link our /app/ folder that exist on the django Docker image to ./backend folder that exist on the host - refer file structure from OP.
Once we have this volume, whenever an update is made to our /app/ folder (i.e. uploading a new image), it will be reflected in our host mounted volumes (i.e. ./backend/) - and vice versa.
We finally create 2 more sets of host mounted volumes (./backend/root/staticfiles/..., and ./backend/root/project/media/) that we'll use to serve our media and static files via Nginx. We share these host mounted volumes between nginx and django service. Starting with version 2 docker-compose automatically creates a network between you Docker images which allows you to share volumes between services.
Finally in our nginx.conf we reference the host mounted volumes in the docker-compose.yml file for the static and media url.
docker-compose.yml
version: '3'
volumes:
postgres_data: {}
postgres_backup: {}
services:
postgres:
image: postgres
volumes:
- postgres_data:/var/lib/postgresql/data
- postgres_backup:/backups
env_file: .env
django:
container_name: django
build:
context: backend
dockerfile: ./root/production/Dockerfile
hostname: django
ports:
- 8000:8000
volumes:
- ./backend:/app/
- ./backend/root/staticfiles/admin:/usr/share/nginx/html/static/admin
- ./backend/root/staticfiles/rest_framework:/usr/share/nginx/html/static/rest_framework
- ./backend/root/staticfiles/summernote:/usr/share/nginx/html/static/summernote
- ./backend/root/project/media/:/usr/share/nginx/html/media/
depends_on:
- postgres
command: >
bash -c '
python3 ./root/manage.py collectstatic --no-input &&
python3 ./root/manage.py makemigrations &&
python3 ./root/manage.py migrate &&
python3 ./root/manage.py initadmin &&
gunicorn teddycrepineau.wsgi -b 0.0.0.0:8000 --chdir=./root/'
env_file: .env
nginx:
container_name: nginx
build:
context: .
dockerfile: ./nginx/Dockerfile
image: nginx
restart: always
depends_on:
- django
ports:
- "80:80"
volumes:
- ./backend/root/staticfiles/admin:/usr/share/nginx/html/static/admin
- ./backend/root/staticfiles/rest_framework:/usr/share/nginx/html/static/rest_framework
- ./backend/root/staticfiles/summernote:/usr/share/nginx/html/static/summernote
- ./backend/root/project/media/:/usr/share/nginx/html/media/
nginx.conf
....
server {
listen 80 default_server;
listen [::]:80 default_server;
server_name localhost;
charset utf-80;
root /usr/share/nginx/html;
index index.html;
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ #proxy_to_app;
}
location #proxy_to_app {
rewrite ^(.+)$ /index.html last;
}
location ^~ /static/ {
autoindex on;
alias /usr/share/nginx/html/static/;
}
location ^~ /media/ {
autoindex on;
alias /usr/share/nginx/html/media/;
}
location ~ ^/api {
proxy_pass http://django:8000;
}
location ~ ^/admin {
proxy_pass http://django:8000;
}
}
}