Django findstatic : No matching file found

Question

A while ago, I attempted to use "collectstatic" in Django to serve my static files and failed miserably. Now I am finally trying to get my static files serving correctly in my development environment. I can't figure out what has gone wrong.

When I run python manage.py findstatic images/add.png

console returns:

base path: C:\Projects\AlmondKing\AlmondKing
static files dirs: C:\Projects\AlmondKing\AlmondKing\static
No matching file found for 'images/add.png'.

The directory paths are correct, but it still can't locate my files. I've tried a number of different settings configurations to no avail. Can anyone spot my problem? Here are what I think are all the relevant settings:

BASE_DIR = os.path.abspath(os.path.dirname(__file__))

DEBUG = True

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    'django.contrib.admin',
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',
    'AlmondKing.InventoryLogs',
    'AlmondKing.FinancialLogs',
    'AlmondKing.AKGenius',
)

STATIC_URL = '/static/'
STATIC_FILES_DIRS = (
    os.path.join((BASE_DIR), "static")
)

print("base path:", BASE_DIR)
print("static files dirs:", STATIC_FILES_DIRS)

EDIT: I found the findstatic --verbosity 2 command and the only directory being searched is: C:\Users\Adam\Envs\AlmondKing\lib\site-packages\django\contrib\admin\static

Apparently it is only looking in my virtual environment, instead of my project directory. Is this normal Django behavior?

Answer 1

The setting is STATICFILES_DIRS, not STATIC_FILES_DIRS.

You are also missing a comma in the setting. Without the comma it is treated as a string not a tuple.

It should be:

STATICFILES_DIRS = (
    os.path.join(BASE_DIR, "static"),
)

Answer 2

At last! Referring here, I learned that the static files directory must be located within the directory of an individual app. I had the static directory in the project root. I moved it into an app directory and it is working now.

This whole project will be using these same static files. If someone knows, do I need to have a copy of them in every App's directory, or can all of my project's apps share a static directory? Thanks!