Why won't collectstatic copy my static files? - django

Question

I have a MyApp/static/MyApp directory.
When I run ./manage.py collectstatic, I expect the MyApp directory be copied to STATIC_ROOT, but it doesn't.
I have DownloadedApp/static/DownloadedApp as well and its copied to STATIC_ROOT fine.
What am I missing?

Answer 1

What are the STATIC_ROOT, STATICFILES_FINDERS, and STATICFILES_DIRS in your settings.py?
When collectstatic is run, the default STATICFILES_FINDERS value django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.FileSystemFinder will collect your static files from any paths that you have in STATICFILES_DIRS.
The other default STATICFILES_FINDERS value django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.AppDirectoriesFinder will look in the /static/ folder of any apps in your INSTALLED_APPS.
All of the static files that are found will be placed in the specified STATIC_ROOT directory.
Check out this link to the collectstatic docs
And this link an explanation of the various static settings in settings.py
You can also use python manage.py findstatic to see which directories collectstatic will look in.

Answer 2

just do this and make the naming convention same
STATIC_URL = '/static/'
STATICFILES_DIRS = [
os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'static')
]
STATIC_ROOT = os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'assets')
static directory contains all off your project assets
assets directory will create automatic when u run this cmd
python3 manage.py collectstatic
this will copy all static folder content into assets folder
hope this helps :)

Answer 3

That just happened to me and I accidentally put the app's static files directory in the .gitignore file. So on my local machine it got collected just fine, but in production the static files were actually missing (gitignored).

Answer 4

your are missing the STATIC_ROOT where your static files going to be copied just
add this line in your settings.py
STATIC_ROOT=os.path.join(BASE_DIR,'staticfiles')
your settings.py looks like this :
STATIC_URL = '/static/'
STATIC_ROOT=os.path.join(BASE_DIR,'staticfiles')
#added manully
STATICFILES_DIRS = [
os.path.join(BASE_DIR, "static")
]
remember to add STAIC_ROOT path in urls.py
from django.contrib import admin
from django.urls import path, include
from django.conf import settings
from django.conf.urls.static import static
urlpatterns = [
path('admin/', admin.site.urls),
path("" ,include("home.urls")),
]+static(settings.STATIC_URL, document_root=settings.STATIC_ROOT)
After all of it you can run :
python manage.py collectstatic
it will create a staticfiles folder for you in your Dir

Answer 5

This happened to me because while investigating a bug occurring on certain dates, changed my computer date and time.
Hence it disturbed things like collectstatic, and also my browser history.
Don't change your computer date and time.

Answer 6

I was under the impression the comparison would be content based. It turned out to be date based. So, don't mess with your files after collecstatic.

Answer 7

One Quick work-around, although this does not fix it or explain WHY it's happening, is to:
go to your project's file directory & rename your project's
'static' folder to something else like 'static-old'
create a new,empty folder called 'static' in your project directory
now if you run python manage.py collectstatic it will see that nothing is
in your static folder and will copy ALL static files over.

Answer 8

if you have setup everything properly for static and you are using nginx then enter this command
sudo nginx -t
You will see error why your static files aren't being served and fix that specific error
In my case I gave wrong path in my nginx config
location /static {
root /home/ubuntu/myproject/app/static/;
}