What's the difference between MEDIA_ROOT and STATIC_ROOT?

[King]

In the Note under this section
http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/howto/static-files/#s-using-django-contrib-staticfiles
, it mentions that "In previous versions of Django, it was common to
place static assets in MEDIA_ROOT along with user-uploaded files, and
serve them both at MEDIA_URL. " and that "staticfiles does not deal
with user-uploaded files at all."

Does this mean that you use STATIC_ROOT for all your static files
(CSS, JS, images), and MEDIA_ROOT just for user-uploaded files?

It's confusing because in the Django code I've looked at, I've only
seen people use the MEDIA_ROOT, and it's often used to store the CSS,
JS and Images (the same files that the documentation seems to be
suggesting that STATIC_ROOT should be used for).

[Xavier Ordoquy]

Hi,

As the documentation said, in the previous version, it was common to place both in the MEDIA_ROOT (unless you used 3rd party application to avoid that).
So as long as the code has not been ported to 1.3, you'll probably see that again and often.

Regards,
Xavier.

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[Mike Ramirez]

Static files appear to be for apps as part of large projects.

from the docs[1]:

For small projects, this isn’t a big deal, because you can just keep the static files somewhere your web server can find it. However, in bigger projects – especially those comprised of multiple apps – dealing with the multiple sets of static files provided by each application starts to get tricky.

also from settings.py

# Absolute path to the directory static files should be collected to.

# Don't put anything in this directory yourself; store your static files

# in apps' "static/" subdirectories and in STATICFILES_DIRS.

# Example: "/home/media/media.lawrence.com/static/"

STATIC_ROOT = ''

STATICFILES_DIRS = (

# Put strings here, like "/home/html/static" or "C:/www/django/static".

# Always use forward slashes, even on Windows.

# Don't forget to use absolute paths, not relative paths.

)

# List of finder classes that know how to find static files in

# various locations.

STATICFILES_FINDERS = (

'django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.FileSystemFinder',

'django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.AppDirectoriesFinder',

# 'django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.DefaultStorageFinder',

)

Essentially, I think this is a "You'll know when you need it." type setting.

Mike

[1] http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/howto/static-files/

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