A simple example of Django and CSS

The recommended approach has changed again (from at least Django 1.5 I think).

At the top of your template put:

{% load staticfiles %}

Then, using the same directory structure (myapp/static/myapp/style.css):

<link rel="stylesheet" href="{% static 'myapp/style.css' %}" />

Source

For the examples you pointed at to work, your static files need to be in a location accessible to Django's built-in staticfiles app.

There are a couple steps to make this happen:

First, within your project directory (ie beside your manage.py file), you'll need to create a directory to hold your static files. Call it "static_files".

Next, you'll need to let Django know to look in that directory, by specifying it in the list of STATICFILES_DIRS within your settings.py file.

Something like this:

STATICFILES_DIRS = [
    '/full/path/to/your/project/static_files/',
]

Within that static_files directory, you can create whatever structure you want, so that is where your css and js directories could go.

After that, you should be able to use the {{ STATIC_URL }} tag in your templates to get access to the base URL of your static files.

So, say, for example, you create project/static_files/css/base.css, you would use it in your template like so:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="{{ STATIC_URL }}/css/base.css" />

Hope that helps!

Edit

With the default settings for STATICFILES_FINDERS, Django should automatically serve up any files from directories listed in your STATICFILES_DIRS -- see the docs for details.

If this doesn't work, some things to check:

• Have you edited your STATICFILES_FINDERS setting to something other than the default?
• Is django.contrib.staticfiles in your list of INSTALLED_APPS in settings.py?
• Are you using Django's built-in server (python manage.py runserver)?
• Do you have DEBUG = True in your settings.py? If not, you'll need to either set it to True or use the insecure option (python manage.py runserver --insecure). When going to production, check out the collectstatic command.

If you follow django's guidelines, you can simplify your life greatly.

In your sample code, inside your application directory, create a folder called static. Inside this folder, place your css files.

Example:

$ django-admin.py startproject myproject
$ cd myproject
myproject$ python manage.py startapp myapp
myproject$ mkdir myapp/static
myproject$ cd myapp/static
myproject/myapp/static$ nano style.css

In your templates:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="{{ STATIC_URL }}style.css" />

Make sure you add myapp to the INSTALLED_APPS list in settings.py. Now when you use the built-in development server, your style sheet will be rendered correctly.

Django searches for a static directory inside installed applications by default, and with current versions of django, static files are enabled by default.

---

The Django example has the path my_app/static/my_app/myimage.jpg which is a little confusing if your app and project have the same name.

This is recommended because when you run collectstatic to gather all your static files, files with the same name will be overwritten. If you have a file called myimage.jpg in another application, it will be overwritten. Giving the application name inside the static directory will prevent this, because the exact directory structure will be replicated inside your STATIC_ROOT directory.

A simple example to illustrate the point. If you have a django project with two apps, like this:

.
├── assets
├── manage.py
├── myapp
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── models.py
│   ├── static
│   │   └── myapp
│   │       └── test.txt
│   ├── tests.py
│   └── views.py
├── myproj
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── __init__.pyc
│   ├── settings.py
│   ├── settings.pyc
│   ├── urls.py
│   └── wsgi.py
└── otherapp
    ├── __init__.py
    ├── models.py
    ├── static
    │   └── otherapp
    │       └── test.txt
    ├── tests.py
    └── views.py

assets is your STATIC_ROOT. Now when you run collectstatic:

.
├── assets
│   ├── myapp
│   │   └── test.txt
│   └── otherapp
│       └── test.txt
├── manage.py
├── myapp
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── __init__.pyc
│   ├── models.py
│   ├── static
│   │   └── myapp
│   │       └── test.txt
│   ├── tests.py
│   └── views.py
├── myproj
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── __init__.pyc
│   ├── settings.py
│   ├── settings.pyc
│   ├── urls.py
│   └── wsgi.py
└── otherapp
    ├── __init__.py
    ├── __init__.pyc
    ├── models.py
    ├── static
    │   └── otherapp
    │       └── test.txt
    ├── tests.py
    └── views.py

You see it is creating the directories as well. In your templates you would now refer to each file with its "namespace" of the app: {{ STATIC_URL }}/myapp/test.txt