How can I get the MEDIA_URL from within a Django template?

Question

I'm somewhat confused as to how Django operates with static content. Essentially, in the settings.py file, we define MEDIA_URL which points to the URL to use when resolving static media such as scripts and styles, as well as MEDIA_ROOT, a reference to where things live on the filesystem.

However, it doesn't seem clear how I can get access to MEDIA_URL from a template, and it's kind-of-important if I want to use Django's mechanism for loading static content at all. Essentially, I have my base template looking somewhat like this:

<html>
   <head>
       {% block styles %}
       <link rel="stylesheet" href="{{ MEDIA_URL }}styles/master.css"/>
       {% endblock %}
       <title>{% block title %}Page Title{% endblock %}</title>
   </head>
   <body>
      {% block scripts %}
      <script type="text/javascript" src="{{ MEDIA_URL }}scripts/jquery.js"></script>
      {% endblock %}
   </body>
</html>

Will the above code actually work? I've heard that you have to use other plugins to get something like this up and running, which seems kind of strange, as presumably the whole point behind defining MEDIA_URL is to use it in templates.

possible duplicate of [Django {{ MEDIA_URL }} blank](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3756841/django-media-url-blank) — Sam Dolan, Sep 06 '11 at 17:24
another duplicate: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/35288793/django-media-url-tag Check out for my answer for options and some advice in this matter: http://stackoverflow.com/a/42563023/5043802 — elnygren, Mar 02 '17 at 18:26

score 6 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 07 '11 at 00:38

To access STATIC_URL in your templates, make sure django.core.context_processors.static is in TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS, and that you're using a RequestContext. More details here.

In addition, static files should be placed under STATIC_URL, not MEDIA_URL, unless it is user-uploaded content.

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 06 '11 at 17:32

I would say that you dont have to use MEDIA_URL and MEDIA_ROOT for your Js,css,img files!

I use STATIC_ROOT,STATIC_URL instead! as far as I know MEDIA_* is for upload of files, such as images, or any document!

Also I use STATIC_* because in my case, I have my js,css,... files in a S3 storage! so when I run collectstatic it just copy all my STATIC files to my cloud storage! So in my templates I have something like this:

    {% block js %}
        <script src="{{ STATIC_URL }}js/libs/modernizr-2.0.min.js"></script>
        <script src="{{ STATIC_URL }}js/libs/respond.min.js"></script>
    {% endblock %}

Check it out this note from Django docs:

Note In previous versions of Django, it was common to place static assets in MEDIA_ROOT along with user-uploaded files, and serve them both at MEDIA_URL. Part of the purpose of introducing the staticfiles app is to make it easier to keep static files separate from user-uploaded files.

For this reason, you need to make your MEDIA_ROOT and MEDIA_URL different from your STATIC_ROOT and STATIC_URL. You will need to arrange for serving of files in MEDIA_ROOT yourself; staticfiles does not deal with user-uploaded files at all. You can, however, use django.views.static.serve() view for serving MEDIA_ROOT in development; see Serving other directories.

How can I get the MEDIA_URL from within a Django template?

2 Answers2

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