media - Django MEDIA_URL and MEDIA_ROOT

Question

I'm trying to upload an image via the Django admin and then view that image either in a page on the frontend or just via a URL.

Note this is all on my local machine.

My settings are as follows:

MEDIA_ROOT = '/home/dan/mysite/media/'

MEDIA_URL = '/media/'

I have set the upload_to parameter to 'images' and the file has been correctly uploaded to the directory:

'/home/dan/mysite/media/images/myimage.png'

However, when I try to access the image at the following URL:

http://127.0.0.1:8000/media/images/myimage.png

I get a 404 error.

Do I need to setup specific URLconf patters for uploaded media?

Any advice appreciated.

Thanks.

Answer 1

UPDATE for Django >= 1.7

Per Django 2.1 documentation: Serving files uploaded by a user during development

from django.conf import settings
from django.conf.urls.static import static

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    # ... the rest of your URLconf goes here ...
) + static(settings.MEDIA_URL, document_root=settings.MEDIA_ROOT)

You no longer need if settings.DEBUG as Django will handle ensuring this is only used in Debug mode.

---

ORIGINAL answer for Django <= 1.6

Try putting this into your urls.py

from django.conf import settings

# ... your normal urlpatterns here

if settings.DEBUG:
    # static files (images, css, javascript, etc.)
    urlpatterns += patterns('',
        (r'^media/(?P<path>.*)$', 'django.views.static.serve', {
        'document_root': settings.MEDIA_ROOT}))

With this you can serve the static media from Django when DEBUG = True (when you run on local computer) but you can let your web server configuration serve static media when you go to production and DEBUG = False