kennethreitz.org / Essays / 2013 / Introducing Dj Static
Introducing DJ-Static
Django doesn't recommend the production use of its static file server for a number of reasons. There exists, however, a lovely WSGI application aptly named Static.
Thus, DJ-Static was born.
Finally, a super-simple way of serving assets in Django that’ll actually perform well — @jacobian
Installation and Configuration
$ pip install dj-static
Configure your static assets in settings.py:
STATIC_ROOT = 'staticfiles'STATIC_URL = '/static/'
Then, update your wsgi.py file to use DJ-Static:
from django.core.wsgiimport get_wsgi_applicationfrom dj_static import Clingapplication = Cling(get_wsgi_application())
That's it! Django deployment has never been simpler.
Benefits
Serving static files from Python greatly simplifies the deployment process. The fewer moving parts your application has, the fewer parts there are to break unexpectedly.
Most importantly, this facilitates Dev/prod parity, which should be a goal of all developers.
What about a CDN?
If you have to ask that question, there's actually quite a good chance you don't. Static responses aren't very different than dynamic ones, especially when using the HTTP Cache headers that DJ-Static provides.
If you're running a top-tier application, optimizing for delivery and reducing frontend load, you will want to explore using a CDN with Django-Storages.