Django to serve static files with exceptions - django

Question

In my production environment I have Nginx serving static files for my Django application, but while developing I let Django so the work.
I need to have Nginx serving all static files but those in a certain subdirectory. So, Django side, I need to intercept that directory and treat it differently.
How can I make Django dev server intercept all the calls to /static/* but not those to /static/myspecialfiles/*´ and hence write a url route to handle the GET calls to said/static/myspecialfiles/*´?

Answer 1

You need to tackle this in two areas, Django and nginx.
For Django, since running a local setup (when DEBUG=True) already serves static content from STATIC_ROOT automatically, just add a URL conf for your special files:
# in urls.py
url(r'^/static/specialfiles/', SpecialView.as_view(), name='special'),
Then, in your nginx conf, make sure you ignore that path so it actually reaches Django:
server {
listen 80;
server_name example.com;
location / {
proxy_pass http://localhost:8000;
}
location /static/specialfiles/ {
proxy_pass http://localhost:8000;
}
location /static/ {
alias /home/ubuntu/dev/example/static/;
}
}
Since the locations are parsed sequentially, your special files will hit the django block before the generic static block.
But really you'd be best to just move your special files somewhere else.