Django - Installing WhiteNoise

Django does not have a built-in solution for serving static files, at least not in production when DEBUG has to be False.

We have to use a third-party solution to accomplish this.

In this Tutorial we will use WhiteNoise, which is a Python library, built for serving static files.

Install WhiteNoise

To install WhiteNoise in your virtual environment, type the command below:

pip install whitenoise 

The result should be something like this:

Collecting whitenoise
  Downloading whitenoise-6.2.0-py3-none-any.whl (19 kB)
Installing collected packages: whitenoise
Successfully installed whitenoise-6.2.0
WARNING: You are using pip version 20.2.3; however, version 22.3.1 is available.
You should consider upgrading via the 'c:\users\Your Name\myworld\scripts\python.exe -m pip install --upgrade pip' command.

Modify Settings

To make Django aware of you wanting to run WhitNoise, you have to specify it in the MIDDLEWARE list in settings.py file:

MIDDLEWARE = [
    'django.middleware.security.SecurityMiddleware',
    'whitenoise.middleware.WhiteNoiseMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.sessions.middleware.SessionMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.common.CommonMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.csrf.CsrfViewMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.auth.middleware.AuthenticationMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.messages.middleware.MessageMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.clickjacking.XFrameOptionsMiddleware',
]

Collect Static Files

There are one more action you have to perform before you can serve the static file. You have to collect all static files and put them into one specified folder.