Serving static files with wsgi

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Deploy Python/Django apps is not a hard task. However, sometimes some problems can show: deploy static files.

Django’s manual offers a detailed set of instructions to copy and deploy static files on production environments: using STATIC_URL and STATIC_ROOT variables on settings.py. More details here: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.0/howto/static-files/

Yet, you will set the webserver to serve files from paths on settings.py. Follow the instructions here.

Deploy on shared hosting environments

However, the scenery can be more difficult when you don’t have access to web server config files. It is a reality on shared hosts. To solve this problem you can consider using the wsgi file: the config file that sets the interface between webserver and Django app.

It is true that Django’s manual affirms that Django does not serve static files. But there are several developers that use the wsgi to serve these files. We can do this in two ways:
1 – dj-static: https://pypi.org/project/dj-static/
2 – withenoise: http://whitenoise.evans.io/en/stable/

Using dj-static

To perform the installation of dj-static package use the follow commands:

pip install dj-static

Perhaps in your hosting server, you need permission to install packages. To solve this, we can use:

pip install dj-static --user

This command will install the package in your /home directory.
After the installation, it is time to config the WSGI file. Open the WSIG file and add the following lines:

from django.core.wsgi import get_wsgi_application
from dj_static import Cling
(…)
application = Cling(get_wsgi_application())

Finally, you can test your site by accessing it. If your static files doest not loaded, verify the STATIC_URL and STATIC_ROOT variables onsettings.py.

Have you ever found this problem in shared hosting? What solution you have applied to?