Application Media

There are two ways to handle application media: manual and automatic.

Manual Copying

The manual method is where you add an entry for each application in STATIC_MEDIA_COPY_PATHS.

STATIC_MEDIA_COPY_PATHS = (
    {'from': settings.MEDIA_ROOT, 'to': '/mnt/mediaserver/media/'},
    {'from': 'apps/coolapp/media/', 'to': '/mnt/mediaserver/media/'},
)

This gives you some control over where each application’s media files are stored.

Note

If the application’s media files are not in a directory named media, then this is the only way you can copy the application’s media files.

Automatic Copying

The automatic copying of application media consists of searching for a directory named media in each installed application, with the exception of django contrib applications, and copying the contents to STATIC_MEDIA_APP_MEDIA_PATH.

Overriding Application Media Files

Sometimes you might want to replace one or more of an existing application’s media files with one of your own. This is easy to do. Simply put the file(s) in the MEDIA_ROOT directory with the same relative path as the application’s media.

For example, if an application had a structure

coolapp/
  admin.py
  media/
    coolapp/
      css/
        base.css
        forms.css
      img/
        logo.png
  models.py
  templates/
  urls.py

You would override the base.css file by putting your file

media/
  css/
  img/
  js/
  coolapp/
    css/
      base.css

During the copying process, your existing file(s) will not be overwritten.

By default, automatic copying is turned on. The STATIC_MEDIA_APP_MEDIA_PATH setting is MEDIA_ROOT. Turn off automatic copying by setting STATIC_MEDIA_APP_MEDIA_PATH to None.