Django Static Files

Configuring static file directories:

To begin with, you need to define the location of your static files on your local directories.

In your Django project settings (settings.py), you'll see STATIC_URL variable, along with extra data, pointing to the prefix URL that points to static files.

In addition to those, you need a STATICFILES_DIRS definition, which is a list of directories where static files are going to be looked for by Django.

                                
# settings.py

STATIC_URL = '/static/'

STATICFILES_DIRS = [
    os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'static'),
]

In this example, we're telling Django to look for static files in a directory called static within our project directory.

Serving static files:

After all configurations of static file directories are done, you should be serving them during the development.

Say, in the main urls.py file of your project, you can add a URL pattern which will serve your static files using Django's static() function which is a built-in one.

                                
# urls.py

from django.conf import settings
from django.conf.urls.static import static

urlpatterns = [
    # Your URL patterns here
]

# Serve static files during development
if settings.DEBUG:
    urlpatterns += static(settings.STATIC_URL, document_root=settings.STATIC_ROOT)

This code ensures that Django serves static files when you're running your project in debug mode (DEBUG=True).

Linking static files in templates:

in your HTML templates, you can link to static files using the {% static %} template tag.

                                
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8">
    <title>My Website</title>
    <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="{% static 'css/styles.css' %}">
</head>
<body>
    <!-- Your HTML content here -->
</body>
</html>

This tag will generate the correct URL for the static file based on the STATIC_URL setting, allowing Django to serve the file correctly.