Django - serving a SPA from static folder

Question

Our django server is our API as well as an operations backend. I'm working on improving our ops backend by writing a Vue SPA that slowly replaces the existing ops backend.

I'm frontend and a little lost in intricacies of Django configs. Could someone suggest a sane solution for this problem?

I would like for the app to be served out of static folder, and have set:

STATICFILES_DIRS = (
    os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'static'),
    os.path.join(BASE_DIR, '../console/dist'),
)

This works and I can see my code when I view source, but only at http://localhost:8000/static/console/index.html

1) this won't work because as a SPA, Vue needs control of routing. From the Django side how can I have /static/console/* use my Vue app? On the Vue end, what do I have to configure in Webpack and Vue-router?

2) despite the fact that I can see my compiled app source, I get errors:

Creating Application Cache with manifest http://localhost:8000/static/appcache/manifest.appcache
index.html:1 Application Cache Checking event
index.html:1 Application Cache Downloading event
index.html:1 Application Cache Progress event (0 of 7) http://localhost:8000/favicon.ico
index.html:1 Application Cache Error event: Resource fetch failed (4) http://localhost:8000/favicon.ico
index.html:1 Uncaught (in promise) TypeError: Failed to register a ServiceWorker: A bad HTTP response code (404) was received when fetching the script.

which is weird because http://localhost:8000/favicon.ico is a working URL. I have a feeling this is also a Webpack problem.

What are my options?

shapiromatron · Accepted Answer · 2018-11-08 20:16:09Z

6

I made it like this for Angular2 app with Django(it works without problems) - I think it can help you.

urls.py:

# catch-all pattern for compatibility with the Angular routes
url(r'^$', views.index),
url(r'^(?P<path>.*)/$', views.index),

views.py

def index(request, path=''):
    """
    Renders the Angular2 SPA
    """
    return render(request, 'index.html')

index.html

{% load staticfiles %}
...some other stuff...
<app-root>Loading... </app-root>
<script src="{% static 'js/jquery-3.1.1.min.js' %}"></script>
<script src="{% static  'js/materialize.min.js'%}"></script>

<!-- Angular app -->
<script type="text/javascript" src="{% static 'js/app/inline.bundle.js' %}"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="{% static 'js/app/vendor.bundle.js' %}"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="{% static 'js/app/main.bundle.js' %}"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="{% static 'js/app/scripts.bundle.js' %}"></script>¸

settings.py

TEMPLATE_DIR = os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'templates')

TEMPLATES = [
    {
        'BACKEND': 'django.template.backends.django.DjangoTemplates',
        'DIRS': [TEMPLATE_DIR],
        'APP_DIRS': True,
        'OPTIONS': {
            'context_processors': [
                'django.template.context_processors.debug',
                'django.template.context_processors.request',
                'django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth',
                'django.contrib.messages.context_processors.messages',
            ],
        },
    },
]

My index.html is stored in templates directory, my js app files are stored in static/js/app.

edited Nov 8, 2018 at 20:16

shapiromatron

6277 silver badges13 bronze badges

answered Mar 31, 2017 at 7:31

Jan Giacomelli

1,33911 silver badges24 bronze badges

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4 Comments

Moulde Over a year ago

What does your development workflow look like? Don't you need to ng build every time your make a change?

Jan Giacomelli Over a year ago

Yes you have to. I already droped that approach. Now I am developing seperate projects which are deployed in seperated docker container behind nginx proxy.

Moulde Over a year ago

Thank you for responding. Did you try using the ng build --watch to make it rebuild on changes?

Jan Giacomelli Over a year ago

No, I was developing with ng serve and then when finished I build it. But I wouldn't recommend that approach. You should develop two separated apps and you should use JWT for auth if you don't want to come into crazy rage mood :)

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