Django not serving media files when hosted on render.

Using Django Deployment
1

i deployed a webapp in Django on render.com but it is not loading the uploaded images. It will show up when i upload those again. but when i re deploy it wont show up again. this is only for uploaded images.
I guess it knows that there are images but it just wont show up.
i tried a lot from information from the internet and django documentations

urls.py

urlpatterns = [
    re_path(r'^static/(?P<path>.*)$', serve, {'document_root': settings.STATIC_ROOT}),
    re_path(r'^media/(?P<path>.*)$', serve, {'document_root': settings.MEDIA_ROOT, 'show_indexes': True}),
    path('',home_view, name='home'),
    path('about_us/', about_view, name='about'),
    path('projects/', project_view, name='projects'),
    path('project_detail/<str:name>', project_details),
    path('gallery/', gallery_view, name='gallery'),
    path('services', services_view, name='services'),
    path('testimonials/', testimonial_view , name='testimonial'),
    path('admin/', admin.site.urls),
] 
#urlpatterns += static(settings.MEDIA_URL, document_root= settings.MEDIA_ROOT)

#urlpatterns += staticfiles_urlpatterns()

settings.py

DEBUG = os.environ.get('D_MODE', 'True').lower() == 'True'

ALLOWED_HOSTS = ['*']
db_url = os.environ.get('DB_URL')
    DATABASES = {
        'default': dj_database_url.parse(db_url)
    }
STATIC_URL = "/static/"
MEDIA_URL = '/media/'
MEDIA_ROOT = os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'media')

if DEBUG:
    STATICFILES_DIRS = [os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'static')]
else:
    STATIC_ROOT = os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'static')

STATICFILES_STORAGE = 'whitenoise.storage.CompressedStaticFilesStorage'

below is the screenshot of the page when loaded:

Screenshot 2023-12-27 at 3.16.02 PM
Screenshot 2023-12-27 at 3.16.02 PM2090×1170 153 KB

2

Hey there!
This is probably because the MEDIA files are being saved on disk on the render machine, but whenever you deploy a new change, your code can be running on a different machine that the one that was saved on disk.
This is stated on the 1st paragraph of the Persistent Disks documentation of render.

The default filesystem for services running on Render is ephemeral. Application data isn’t persisted across deploys and restarts, and this works just fine for most apps because they use managed databases to persist data.

  • You can, read the above documentation and see how you can have persistent disk storage; or
  • Use another cloud provider for this kind of storage (AWS S3 is a common choice). In this case, you’ll probably want to store your media files using something like django-storages.

Cheers!

3

I’ve been working to solve this for a week. Could you suggest any free hosting platforms with persistant storage? I only use render to show my clients theirs product and get feedback or is there any other way to do it?
Thanks alot…

4

I believe that AWS has a free tier that includes S3.
You can then use django-storages to upload/retrieve files from that.

1 Like
5

I know this is a bit late tor respond here, but I am hosting a django application on Render. I just successfully refactored my code to point to my persistent disk’s mounted path after I replaced my settings.py with a settings directory. Django/Render no longer knew where to point to regarding my user avatar images. I had to create a URL in my django_boards/urls.py file using re_path and pointing to my production environment in my settings directory (production.py). This is basically what I did:

from django.contrib import admin
from django.urls import path, include, re_path # re_path is new

from accounts import views as accounts_views
from boards import views

from django.contrib.auth import views as auth_views

from django.conf import settings
from django_boards.settings import development, base, production # new line
from django.conf.urls.static import static, serve # serve is new
from django.contrib import admin

urlpatterns = [
    ...
     path('admin/', admin.site.urls),
     re_path(r'^media/(?P<path>.*)$', serve, {'document_root': production.MEDIA_ROOT}),
]
if development:
    urlpatterns += static(base.MEDIA_URL, document_root=development.MEDIA_ROOT)

My settings directory is inside my django_boards directory where my project urls.py also resides. Inside settings/, I have a base.py, development.py, and production.py file. I also have written a series regarding building my Django application which I have published on my personal site mariadcampbell.com. Link to the table of contents: How to create a fullstack application using Django and Python Table of Contents. I am currently updating part 32 to include this information and more. Should be finished in the next couple of days, FYI. Hope this helps anyone else who has this issue on Render!

1 Like