Heroku & Django: "OSError: No such file or directory: '/app/{myappname}/static'"

Question

I have a Django app on Heroku. I am having some problems with static files (they are loading in one Heroku environment but not another), so I tried the debug command recommended here.

$ heroku run python manage.py collectstatic --noinput
Running `python manage.py collectstatic --noinput` attached to terminal... up, run.8771
OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/app/{myappname}/static'

Here is my settings.py, which is the same thing Heroku recommends:

import os
import os.path

BASE_DIR = os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__))
STATIC_ROOT = 'staticfiles'
STATIC_URL = '/static/'

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

I get the error whether or not I actually have a directory "static" at the root level in my Git repo (tested it both ways).

Any ideas?

Solution 1

It's looking for a folder named 'static' that's next to the settings.py, i.e. in the project folder, not at the root of the git repo.

git root/
git root/{app name}
git root/{app name}/settings.py
git root/{app name}/static/         <- this is what you're missing

Note that empty folders aren't tracked by git, so you'll have to put a blank file in there if it's empty. Alternatively, remove the STATICFILES_DIRS setting until you need it.

Solution 2

I just had this same problem, and here's the solution that worked for me:

I changed:

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

to:

STATICFILES_DIRS = (
    os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'myappfolder/static'),
)

Solution 3

@joerick's answer above is the thing. However, if you do not want to place another 'static' folder (git root/{your app}/static), you might consider changing the BASE_DIR variable that is initially supplied by django-admin makeproject:

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

which is just the (git root/) directory

Comments

[Stein G. Strindhaug]

I had the same problem on a heroku site, and the only thing missing was a blank .gitignore file!

[Joseph]

This worked for me as well, although my path required moving up a directory: os.path.join(BASE_DIR, '../myappfolder/static')

[CoderOfTheNight]

Almost nothing worked for me, except the last item "Alternatively, remove the STATICFILES_DIRS setting until you need it" which made everything work beautifully. Heroku would not "collect static" until that line went away.

[Amon]

Perfect man, this was the problem I was having. I just couldn't figure out where to put the damn templates.

[Adil Warsi]

none of them works for me, it is, "myappfolder " means the name of your app on heroku or just myappfolder

[Laenka-Oss]

I like the last part of the answer. ...remove the STATICFILES_DIRS setting until you need it. E.g. One does not really need it in the Development server.