Typically, static files are not served using Django. Instead, a web server like Apache, Nginx or a CDN will handle such things. Because each Django app can contain it’s own static files this makes it difficult because the static files are spread across multiple directories. Do not fear, there is a simple solution, Django’s static files app.

To collect all static files and copy them to your chosen target location, use the following command:

./manage.py <env> collectatic --noinput -i *.coffee -i *.less

You may have noticed the -i coffee -i less flag that I used in that example, check out the next section about webassets for more info about that.

Django Compressor makes it possible to pre-compile static files in a number of different ways. The demo Django app demonstrates converting coffeescript and less into JavaScript and css respectively and also minifying the generated JavaScript and css. All of the real magic happens in how you include the static source files in your html templates. There is a command that can go find all of the static files that are referenced in all of your templates and run them through their respective compilers and move them to your static files location.

Here is how to run static files through the django-compressor filters:

./manage.py <env> compress

The -i *.coffee -i *.less mentioned above is so that none of your ‘raw source’ files, your CoffeeScript and less files actually get copied to your static folder, these files will be sent through the coffee and less compilers to generate JavaScript and CSS then that output will be moved to your static root.