Conditional Url Pattern for Django - django

I have a problem where i have to send two urls of partially same format to different views.
eg. "domain/land/one-brush" will go to views.land(request, id) where id is "one-brush"
and similarly domain/land/one-brush/include/images/dot.jpg will be served statically either by custom view or django static serve.. i prefer static serve.
one thing i have in mind that to write two url patterns one for land// and other for land//anything/will/do. First will redirect to custom url and second one will be served statically..
Any better way would be appreciated.

see how django handles static files using django staticfiles app, note that static files should be put in a totally different directory then other files in your project
STATICFILES_DIRS = (
"/home/special.polls.com/polls/static",
"/home/polls.com/polls/static",
"/opt/webfiles/common",
)
in a real world deployment django should not be serving static files, this work is better done by apache / nginx etc. or even better by some cdn like amazon's / rackspace / google storage etc.
separating static files is usually achieved by using some tool like django pipline that will also help you uglify your files, zip them etc.
anyway, if you still want to serve some urls that start with the same path, bare in mind that django will try to find the first match in the list, meaning you'll want to put:
domain/land/one-brush/include/images/
before:
domain/land/one-brush/

Related

Django serve files outside the web root

I currently have Django set up to upload files to:
/path/to/project/uploads
This works great. This folder is in the root folder of the project so the files cannot be served directly from a web URL, which is what I want, the files are "CVs" uploaded by users.
I've had a look at a third-party django app called filetransfers which would do the job, but I'm wondering if there is a way with Django core to serve files from outside the media folder.
Any help would be great.
Andy
Depending on what web server you are using I would recommend using X-sendfile if you use Apache or X-accel-redirect if you use Nginx. But remember you will need to change setting in your web server. But this is far more efficient way of serving files than using Django to do it.
If what you want is to keep control on how your files are served / who can see them etc, then the simplest solution is to write a custom view serving theses files. You just have to provide the file's content as the response body and set the appropriate response headers (file type, content length etc). Reading the FineManual(tm) part about the Response object should be a good starting point.
Resolved using FileWrapper().
Thanks anyway.

serving static files on a separate server

I'm creating a website with django. There isn't much static content ( maybe 20 images, and 5-10 css/javascript docs).
I read up on Managing Static files in django. Do I need to deploy my static content on a separate server, or will it work fine since I have very little static content? currently, I'm accessing all my css files and images with the actual path name instead of using "{{STATIC_URL}}".
First you need to use {% static %} to access static files. Please see Django's official docs on this.
Answering your question: you do not need to keep your static files on a separate server but it is highly recommended. The main reason is performance. They will be served directly from HTTP server avoiding additional load on application server. Also, they will be cached by server/client.
You can find a lot of article on this topic. Also check official docs: deploying static files.
You will at least need an HTTP server running on whatever you're running your django project from, and it's highly recommended that you use a separate server for your static files apart from your app logic.
Secondly, it's very bad practice not to use {{ STATIC_URL }} or a similar item. Absolute paths are evil. If the project changes machines, or if it needs multiple versions, etc. These paths could very well change.

Django: How to use static files (simple case, jquery)

I am trying to use jQuery on a Django site. I need to include the jQuery.js library. I have read a lot about Django static files, but I don't think anyone has asked this particular question. I have only three static files to serve: jquery.js, anothersmallfile.js, and styles.css. The Django docs on static file serving say:
"For small projects, this isn’t a big deal, because you can just keep the static files somewhere your web server can find it. link
I would like to "just keep them somewhere my webserver can find them" because elsewhere the Django docs clearly state (warn) that their static-files serving method is only for a development environment. I only have a few static files and I just want the simplest secure solution.
Unfortunately I can't get it working. No matter where I put the files, Django can't find them. Debugging through Chrome web developer console I see I'm getting a 404 error:
GET http://127.0.0.1:8000/templates/polls/jquery.js 404 (NOT FOUND)
I am new to running a server. Do I A.) need to tell my urls.py file where to find static files? or perhaps the problem is B.) that I have misunderstood this issue - Django is my webserver (for production) so right now I must use the Django static files solution?
Doesn't seem like it ought to be very difficult to get my templates to simply recognize a .js file that's in the same directory as they are. Am I missing something?
Edit, before I get more downvotes: I am talking about this passage from the page linked above:
///////////////////////
Django developers mostly concern themselves with the dynamic parts of web applications – the views and templates that render anew for each request. But web applications have other parts: the static files (images, CSS, Javascript, etc.) that are needed to render a complete web page.
For small projects, this isn’t a big deal, because you can just keep the static files somewhere your web server can find it. However, in bigger projects – especially those comprised of multiple apps – dealing with the multiple sets of static files provided by each application starts to get tricky.
That’s what django.contrib.staticfiles is for: it collects static files from each of your applications (and any other places you specify) into a single location that can easily be served in production.
///////////////////
Emphasis added
So if that's what django.contrib.staticfiles is for, what's the simpler solution? I dispute that this is a repeat of prior questions.
You need to read that documentation more closely. That warning is for production. In development, you do use that static-serving method, ie putting it in your urls.py. And, that documentation will also show that the templates directory is not the right place to put them: a separate static or media directory is.
Edit after comment I really don't understand your comment. Either you do it in development via the static serving view, or you use your production server. But you say you don't have a production server. When you get one, whether it's Apache or Nginx or whatever, you put your static files in a directory and tell that server to serve files from there. That is the simple solution. The staticfiles app, exactly as in the docs you quoted, are for when you've got lots of files in different apps (and it simplifies the move from development to production, not complicates it as you seem to think).
Suppose your app is www.
setting.py -> STATIC_ROOT = 'static/'
make dir www/static
make file www/static/some.html
in browser localhost:8000/static/some.html
That's all.

Django where to put static files

I am using Django to create a small web app, however I do not know where i must put my HTML and JS files. I don't want to use the templateing system because I have no need to pass the values from Django directly to the HTML template, Instead the HTML will be static and I will fetch all the data necessary and send the data to be input back into the database using AJAX with Jquery.
My Question is where must I put my HTMl and JS files so they are accessible from the web browser and will be in the same directory so that I can send my ajax requests to something like
http://localhost:2000/webapp/RPC/updateitem/ (more stuff here)
and where the HTML files are
http://localhost:2000/webapp/index.html
Thanks,
RayQuang
You let your main webserver (the one you're running django on) deal with the static files. In most cases this means that you simly server the files through apache (or lighttpd or cherrypy or whatever). Django is only ment for the rendering of dynamic things and thus should not be used for serving static files.
If you're running from a development server (which I can't recommend), this tutorial will help you through setting it up: Serving static files

How do you serve vanilla/custom pages in an MVC based site?

Let's say you've setup your site using Pylons, Django and most of the site runs fine and according to the framework used. However, what if you had a custom section that was entirely say, composed of flat html files and its own set of images, which you didn't have time to actually incorporate using the framework and were forced to basically support, under the same domain? Should there be some sort of default controller/view that's super bare minimalistic or do frameworks such as these somehow offer support in some smart way?
I realize also that potentially one could setup a new subdomain and reroute it to an entirely different directory, but I'm just curious as to how one would solve this when forced to deal with a framework.
When serving static pages I'd rather avoid having Django or Pylons handle the request, and handle it with the web server only. Using Nginx, you'd use a directive like:
location / {
root /whatever/the/path/is/;
# if the file exists, return it immediately
if (-f $request_filename) {
break;
}
# pass requests to MVC framework
# i.e. proxy to another server on localhost:
proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:80;
}
For pylons you should be able to drop your static html files in the public directory. If there isn't a controller for a url then I think pylons looks in the public folder next.
For Django, I would serve these in exactly the same way as you serve your static assets - in your site_media directory, along with subdirs for js, css and img, you could have an html directory. Then the URL would just be /site_media/html/whatever.html.
In Django take a look at flatpages. It's part of the django.contrib package and uses flatpages middleware to serve up flat HTML controlled through the admin interface. For basic purposes, serving up additional about pages or the like this should do the trick.
You could also just create an HTML folder and - using mod_python, at least - set no handler for that path in the Apache configuration file (e.g. vhost.conf).