Serving static files with Ngnix, Django and Docker - django

Question

I am fairly new to Nginx and Docker and am currently facing an issue regarding a docker container setup. The setup consists of three containers: Nginx, Django and Postgres. It works as expected for the most part, however, I am not able to access static files through Nginx.
Here is the 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 server {
server server:8000;
}
server {
listen 80 default_server;
listen [::]:80 default_server;
server_name localhost;
charset utf-8;
root /usr/share/nginx/html;
index index.html;
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ #rewrites;
}
location #rewrites {
rewrite ^(.+)$ /index.html last;
}
location ^~ /static/ {
autoindex on;
alias /usr/share/nginx/html/static/;
}
location ~ ^/api {
proxy_pass http://server;
}
location ~ ^/admin {
proxy_pass http://server;
}
}
}
I would expect Nginx to serve /usr/share/nginx/html/static/ when I access the address localhost:8000/static. I did check the container fs at /usr/share/nginx/html/static/, and the static files are present.
Here is the docker-compose.yml:
version: "3"
services:
nginx:
container_name: nginx
build:
context: .
dockerfile: ./nginx/Dockerfile
image: nginx
restart: always
volumes:
- ./server/static:/usr/share/nginx/html/static
ports:
- 80:80
depends_on:
- server
command: nginx -g 'daemon off';
server:
container_name: server
build:
context: ./server
dockerfile: Dockerfile
hostname: server
ports:
- 8000:8000
volumes:
- ./server:/src/project
depends_on:
- "db"
restart: on-failure
env_file: .env
command: >
bash -c '
python manage.py makemigrations &&
python manage.py migrate &&
gunicorn project.wsgi -b 0.0.0.0:8000'
db:
container_name: postgres
image: postgres:latest
hostname: postgres
ports:
- 5432:5432
volumes:
- /var/lib/postgresql/data
The folder ./server/static contains all static files assembled trough python manage.py collectstatic and adds them to the volume /usr/share/nginx/html/static. However, when I try to access the static files, f.e. at localhost:8000/admin, I receive warnings for missing css files (base.css, login.css, ..).

Answer 1

Update:
For anyone wondering, I had to change to nginx port in the docker-compose file to 8000, so that requests from client to localhost:8000 will be processed by nginx and not the server directly. With that in my mind I also changed the port of the server in the docker-compose file to expose so that it is only internally accessible. This will however prevent you from accessing the admin part of django as well.
Here is the 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 server {
server server:8000;
}
server {
listen 8000 default_server;
listen [::]:8000 default_server;
server_name localhost;
charset utf-8;
root /usr/share/nginx/html;
index index.html;
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ #rewrites;
}
location #rewrites {
rewrite ^(.+)$ /index.html last;
}
location ^~ /static/ {
autoindex on;
alias /usr/share/nginx/html/static/;
}
location ~ ^/api {
proxy_pass http://server;
}
location ~ ^/admin {
proxy_pass http://server;
}
}
}
Here is the docker-compose.yml:
version: "3"
services:
nginx:
container_name: nginx
build:
context: .
dockerfile: ./nginx/Dockerfile
image: nginx
restart: always
volumes:
- ./server/static:/usr/share/nginx/html/static
ports:
- 8000:8000
- 80:8000
depends_on:
- server
command: nginx -g 'daemon off';
server:
container_name: server
build:
context: ./server
dockerfile: Dockerfile
hostname: server
expose:
- "8000"
volumes:
- ./server:/src/project
depends_on:
- "db"
restart: on-failure
env_file: .env
command: >
bash -c '
python manage.py makemigrations &&
python manage.py migrate &&
gunicorn project.wsgi -b 0.0.0.0:8000'
db:
container_name: postgres
image: postgres:latest
hostname: postgres
ports:
- 5432:5432
volumes:
- /var/lib/postgresql/data

Answer 2

You're finding solutions based on false assumptions, because you have not emerged yourself in the material. That's fine if you just want to have a setup that works and then understand it later. You're not the first person to use Docker for Django development, so look around:
There is what Docker has already done. It's not the only way to do it and certainly not the best way on several fronts.
If you really want an Nginx based setup, then Real Python has a really good example.
The short points of why your setup was not working and your fixes are not an improvement:
You use http protocol and WSGI is much better suited for this
Your solution assumed static files must be served by Django. They must not. Nginx is much better at it, but serving them with Nginx is in fact a bit of a slow down if you're in the early stage of a project where you might be adding a lot of new static files.
And so...you should read the document that virtually anyone seems to skip.