Running collectstatic on server : AttributeError: 'PosixPath' object has no attribute 'startswith'

Question

After deploying on a server on digital ocean using nginx, gunicorn, django, and virtualenv, I try to use collectstatic:

python manage.py collectstatic --settings=config.settings.production

As you can see I have multiple setting files. One base, one local and one production setting file. Below is the error:

    Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "manage.py", line 22, in <module>
    execute_from_command_line(sys.argv)
  File "/home/tony/vp/vpenv/lib/python3.5/site-packages/django/core/management/__init__.py", line 363, in execute_from_command_line
    utility.execute()
  File "/home/tony/vp/vpenv/lib/python3.5/site-packages/django/core/management/__init__.py", line 355, in execute
    self.fetch_command(subcommand).run_from_argv(self.argv)
  File "/home/tony/vp/vpenv/lib/python3.5/site-packages/django/core/management/base.py", line 283, in run_from_argv
    self.execute(*args, **cmd_options)
  File "/home/tony/vp/vpenv/lib/python3.5/site-packages/django/core/management/base.py", line 330, in execute
    output = self.handle(*args, **options)
  File "/home/tony/vp/vpenv/lib/python3.5/site-packages/django/contrib/staticfiles/management/commands/collectstatic.py", line 173, in handle
    if self.is_local_storage() and self.storage.location:
  File "/home/tony/vp/vpenv/lib/python3.5/site-packages/django/utils/functional.py", line 239, in inner
    return func(self._wrapped, *args)
  File "/home/tony/vp/vpenv/lib/python3.5/site-packages/django/utils/functional.py", line 35, in __get__
    res = instance.__dict__[self.name] = self.func(instance)
  File "/home/tony/vp/vpenv/lib/python3.5/site-packages/django/core/files/storage.py", line 283, in location
    return abspathu(self.base_location)
  File "/home/tony/vp/vpenv/lib/python3.5/posixpath.py", line 357, in abspath
    if not isabs(path):
  File "/home/tony/vp/vpenv/lib/python3.5/posixpath.py", line 64, in isabs
    return s.startswith(sep)
AttributeError: 'PosixPath' object has no attribute 'startswith'

my production.py settings file contains the following:

MEDIA_ROOT = BASE_DIR / 'media'
MEDIA_URL = 'media/'
STATIC_ROOT = BASE_DIR / 'static'

my base dir is as follows (imported from the base setting file):

BASE_DIR = Path(__file__).resolve().parent.parent.parent

What could be the cause?

Solution 1

You're using Python 3.5. Support for Path objects in the os module was added in Python 3.6. You can:

• either upgrade to Python 3.6; or

• avoid using Path objects:

  BASE_DIR = os.path.abspath(os.path.join(__file__, '../../../'))
  MEDIA_ROOT = os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'media')
  STATIC_ROOT = os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'static')
  

Solution 2

This was my earlier settings . I am using Python 3.5. Django 2.1.

BASE_DIR = Path(__file__).resolve().parent.parent.parent
STATIC_ROOT = BASE_DIR / 'static'

I changed just one thing:

STATIC_ROOT = str(BASE_DIR / 'static')

It worked fine.

Comments

[Tony]

You are right! I would like to upgrade to the newer version but running pip install --upgrade python wont do the work. I think I need to re create the virtualenv

[a3k]

Thanks, I have python 3.9 but had this issue, but followed your answer and it's solved now!

[Charanjit Singh]

Same issue with Python 3.8.10