[Django]-STATIC_URL not working

From the docs:

If {{ STATIC_URL }} isn’t working in your template, you’re probably not using RequestContext when rendering the template.

https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/howto/static-files/

Most things have already been mentioned but to compile and add a little:

1. Make sure your settings.py file correctly specifies the locations of your static files. As Steven Keith wrote, you should have something like:

   # Absolute path to the directory static files should be collected to.
   # Don't put anything in this directory yourself; store your static files
   # in apps' "static/" subdirectories and in STATICFILES_DIRS.
   # Example: "/home/media/media.lawrence.com/static/"
   STATIC_ROOT = ''
   
   STATIC_URL = '/static/'
   
   ADMIN_MEDIA_PREFIX = '/static/admin/'
   
   import os
   # Additional locations of static files
   STATICFILES_DIRS = (
       os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), 'static'),
   )
   

2. Then make sure that your TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS include ‘django.core.context_processors.static’. If there’s no entry for TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS in your settings.py, then it defaults to the below, and you’re all good.

   TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS = (
       'django.core.context_processors.debug',
       'django.core.context_processors.i18n',
       'django.core.context_processors.media',
       'django.core.context_processors.static',
       'django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth',
       'django.contrib.messages.context_processors.messages',
   )
   

3. Make sure that you use RequestContext when you render your templates. django.shortcuts.render does this by default (see here), so you could just call

   from django.shortcuts import render
   
   def myViewFunction(request):
       return render(request, 'myTemplate.html')
   

   Be careful as django.shortcuts.render_to_response doesn’t do this for you unless you add an argument, so you’d have to write something like

   from django.shortcuts import render_to_response
   
   def myViewFunction(request):
       return render_to_response('myTemplate.html', myContext, context_instance=RequestContext(request))
   

For me, the answer was simply to stop using STATIC_URL, and instead use the following:

I changed mine from

<link href="{{ STATIC_URL }}css/survey.less" media="screen" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>

to:

<link href="{% static "css/style.less" %}" media="screen" rel="stylesheet" type="text/less"/>

And now it works fine. Much simpler, and I suspect this is also the slightly “more correct” way to use static now (as of Django 1.4) anyways. Please see the Django docs for more info on the specifics.

Dont forget to add {% load static from staticfiles %} at the top of your templates that use it too.

As I’ve been accused of not answering the question, let me clarify me thought process:

My question is why doesn't my first version of this template work?

STATIC_URL is returning a False value

To determine why, here is the steps I would use:

• Try printing it in your templates body – {{ STATIC_URL }}.

• Check settings.py to ensure the value is set – STATIC_URL = ‘/static/’

Check whether you have the STATIC files set up properly in runserver:

https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.3/ref/contrib/staticfiles/

For reference I use:

# Absolute path to the directory static files should be collected to.
# Don't put anything in this directory yourself; store your static files
# in apps' "static/" subdirectories and in STATICFILES_DIRS.
# Example: "/home/media/media.lawrence.com/static/"
STATIC_ROOT = ''

STATIC_URL = '/static/'

ADMIN_MEDIA_PREFIX = '/static/admin/'

# Additional locations of static files
STATICFILES_DIRS = (
    os.path.join(PROJECT_DIR, 'static'),
)

or an Apache alias:

Alias /static /Users/stevenkeith/foo/bar/static

<Directory /Users/stevenkeith/foo/bar/static>
    Order deny,allow
    Allow from all
</Directory>

or whatever method you want, nginx, etc

Here is a tutorial to implement load the static image

tree

setting.py

base.html

What worked for me was pointing the STATIC_ROOT and the STATIC_URL to the same static directory

my basic file structure

core/static/(
...
img/logos/green.jpg
js
css
...
)

…

STATIC_ROOT='/core/static/'
STATIC_URL='/core/static/'

and so in my html template I did

{% load static %}

<img src="{% static 'img/logos/green.jpg' %} />"
...

It worked!