ImproperlyConfigured at / Empty static prefix not permitted - Django

django, django-urls, heroku, python, static-files

Solution

I added the same line in my urls.py and got the same error as you.

+ static(settings.MEDIA_URL, document_root=settings.MEDIA_ROOT)

The documentation here says to use `settings.STATIC_URL` and `settings.STATIC_ROOT`

I changed it to the documentation version

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    ....urls......

) + static(settings.STATIC_URL, document_root=settings.STATIC_ROOT)

and the error went away!

I checked my settings file and made sure `settings.MEDIA_URL` and `settings.MEDIA_ROOT` were both defined correctly. Later I adjusted urls.py back to using `settings.MEDIA_URL` and `settings.MEDIA_ROOT`. Everything worked as expected.

These are the relevant parts of my settings.py file:

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

# Static files (CSS, JavaScript, Images)
# https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.6/howto/static-files/

STATIC_URL = '/static/'
STATIC_ROOT = os.path.join(REPOSITORY_ROOT, 'static/')

MEDIA_URL = '/media/'
MEDIA_ROOT = os.path.join(REPOSITORY_ROOT, 'media/')

I think `MEDIA_URL` was set incorrectly

Problem

I'm working on uploading/displaying images with Django. The website is deployed on Heroku. Following this tutorial I was able to successfully upload images. However, the images weren't being displayed in the template. I then learned that my urls.py should have this line at the end: ``` + static(settings.MEDIA_URL, document_root=settings.MEDIA_ROOT) ``` I added this to the end of my urls.py but now I'm getting this error: ``` ImproperlyConfigured at / Empty static prefix not permitted ``` I have MEDIA_URL and MEDIA_ROOT in my settings.py and neither are empty. ``` BASE_DIR = os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__)) MEDIA_ROOT = os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'media') # URL that handles the media served from MEDIA_ROOT. Make sure to use a # trailing slash. # Examples: "http://example.com/media/", "http://media.example.com/" MEDIA_URL = '/media/' ``` Why is this error happening and how would I fix it? Here's what I think is the relevant part of my urls.py: ``` from django.contrib import admin from django.conf import settings from django.conf.urls.static import static import notifications admin.autodiscover() urlpatterns = patterns('', ....urls...... ) + static(settings.MEDIA_URL, document_root=settings.MEDIA_ROOT) ```

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