What is the absolute path of BASE DIR?

Django newbie here. I have trouble understanding the meaning of:

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

and

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

What's happening here?

I take it the "file" is the settings.py file we are in (?), so the BASE_Dir is two folders up from that...? i.e. the one with manage.py in it?

So the STATIC_ROOT, will be one? or two? directories up from the BASE_DIR. Will the STATIC_ROOT FOLDER be made for me? Or do I have to make one called "static"?

└── MY_PROJECT ├── BASE_DIR │   ├── MY_APP │   │   └── settings.py │   └── manage.py └── static 

Is the above right for this example? Then what the heck / where the heck will the STATIC_FILES_DIRS be?

8 Answers

BASE_DIR is your Django project directory. The same directory where manage.py is located.

If you want to know where is located BASE_DIR, you can print it to the terminal, just add this line to your settings.py:

print "base dir path", BASE_DIR 

and runserver to see results.

If your settings.py is configured like this, your filesystem looks like this:

└── MY_PROJECT ├── BASE_DIR │ ├── MY_APP │ │ └── settings.py │ └── manage.py └── static -> STATIC_ROOT └── static -> STATICFILES_DIRS 

But it is not a good configuration because it mixes up collected statics and the directory where Django tries to find static files (e. g. to collect them). May be better to use this:

└── MY_PROJECT └── BASE_DIR ├── my_app │ ├── settings.py │ └── static -> STATICFILES_DIRS ├── manage.py └── deployment ├── collected_static -> STATIC_ROOT └── media -> MEDIA_ROOT 

# settings.py BASE_DIR = os.path.dirname(os.path.dirname(__file__)) STATICFILES_DIRS = (os.path.join( BASE_DIR, "my_app", "static"),) STATIC_ROOT = os.path.join( os.path.dirname(BASE_DIR), "deployment", "collected_static") MEDIA_ROOT = os.path.join( os.path.dirname(BASE_DIR), "deployment", "media") 

Now you can easily deploy your static and media files using your favorite webserver (Apache, Nginx etc.) pointing it to the "deployment" directory.

Update:

I added also a recommendable configuration for MEDIA_ROOT and changed the path for the collected static.

This answer was written for Python 3 and Django 3.x.

It is common to set up a Django project for dev, prod and perhaps test settings. These settings usually inherit from base settings, which are defined in a file called your_app_name/settings/base.py. Within base.py, BASE_DIR might be defined like this:

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

The manage.py shell subcommand accepts a line to be interpreted by using the -c option. Here is a one-line solution that displays BASE_DIR for a Django app called frobshop:

$ ./manage.py shell -c 'from frobshop.settings import base; print(f"BASE_DIR={base.BASE_DIR}")' BASE_DIR=/var/work/django/frobshop 

I provide additional information in my Django Notes blog page.

for path settings in django projects i use

BASE_DIR = os.path.dirname(os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__))) STATIC_PRODUCTION_DIR = os.path.abspath(os.path.join( os.path.dirname(__file__), '..', '..', 'static_production')) STATIC_URL = '/static/' STATIC_ROOT = os.path.join(STATIC_PRODUCTION_DIR, "static") MEDIA_URL = '/media/' MEDIA_ROOT = os.path.join(STATIC_PRODUCTION_DIR, "media") STATICFILES_DIRS = [ os.path.join(BASE_DIR, "static"), ] 

What I did and that really helped me was :

1. go to settings.py and add --> STATICFILES_DIRS = [os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'static')] at the end of file.

2. Go to the base html template in your templates folder, and add these 2 lines in the head section (Just make sure you create a folder in static. in my case it is css as you can see below, could be different name ):

   a){% load static %} b)

if anything contains path in it that you didn't understand where is it or how it works just type in the bottom of your file print('my directory', UNKNOWN_DIR) then run in Terminal Python manage.py runserver.

'my directory' is just a string you can type in any string then UNKNOWN_DIR is what you wanna know where is it. then run Python manage.py runserver.

EXEMPLES:

print('my path', (os.path.abspath(file)) )

python manage.py runserver

print('my path', (os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(file))) )

python manage.py runserver

print('my path', os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'staticfiles') )

python manage.py runserver

Add this code below to "settings.py" so that you can see the absolute path of "BASE_DIR" on your console:

# "settings.py" print("BASE_DIR is", BASE_DIR)