Django Staticfiles Noimport

django-staticfiles-import exists to allow Django's collectstatic management command to run with the bare minimum of environment variables so it can be run inside a docker build step such that the produced container is self-contained.

This approach allows typical runtime initialization to verify all required runtime environment variables are defined and provides an alternative entrypoint for just the collectstatic and findstatic commands.

Specifically, this project allows for Django apps with static/ directories that expect you to use the enabled-by-default AppDirectoriesFinder.

Requirements & Constraints

Utilizing this package requires accepting a handful of constraints that are acceptable in our environment:

• Static assets will be served at the same path in all environments (i.e. STATIC_URL doesn't vary per environment.)
• Django "apps" may not manipulate any static file handling behaviors during app initialization.
• INSTALLED_APPS must reference app names as strings, as opposed to importing an AppConfig directly.

Setup

1. Ensure you have an os.environ-agnostic settings module.
   • This may be achieved by creating a simple settings/apps.py module that is imported from your primary settings with glob syntax like: from .apps import * and a settings/static.py that imports it as well.
   • Somewhere in that settings chain you must define SECRET_KEY which is the one required non-staticfiles related setting.
2. Use the provided staticfiles_noimport.finders.AppDirectoriesNoImportFinder in your STATICFILES_FINDERS settings. (See included example.)
3. Use collectstatic and findstatic directly without using the typical manage.py entrypoint. You'll need to inject your static-specific settings (e.g., DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=settings.static) for things to work as expected.

Example Usage

# settings/apps.py
INSTALLED_APPS = (
    "django.contrib.auth",
    "django.contrib.contenttypes",
    "django.contrib.admin",
    ...
    ...
    "yourappone",
    "yourapptwo",
)

# settings/static.py
from .apps import *

STATIC_ROOT = "/static/foobar/"
STATIC_URL = "/static/foobar/"

STATICFILES_DIRS = (
    "/some/resolved/path/static",
)

STATICFILES_FINDERS = (
    "django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.FileSystemFinder",
    "staticfiles_noimport.finders.AppDirectoriesNoImportFinder"
)

STATICFILES_STORAGE = "django.contrib.staticfiles.storage.ManifestStaticFilesStorage"

Running collectstatic:

$ DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=myproject.settings.static collectstatic