Pythonanywhere static files mapping - when does it kick in? - pythonanywhere

Question

I have a django instance set up on pythonanywhere.
I have debug turned off in my settings
I have a STATIC_ROOT setting of os.path.join(BASE_DIR, "allstatic").
I have set up the static files mapping in the Web section of my pythonanywhere console
URL = /allstatic/
Directory = /home/username/project/allstatic
(I'm calling it allstatic so I can tell that the files are coming from the mapping)
I have run collectstatic and /allstatic has files in it.
I am using {% static 'folder/file' %} in my templates
And with all this - the static files were all being delivered. However, when I checked the page source HTML, they all appeared to be coming from '/static' So I wasn't sure if they were being delivered by the more efficient console driven mapping.
When I changed 'STATIC_URL' setting to 'allstatic' the html shows '/allstatic' and the files still load. BUt I'm not sure how to tell if my mapping is working.
To use a concrete example
I have an app called 'universal' in django, with the following structure
universal
static
universal
img
logo.png
In my local dev environment, with debugging on, this shows up as /static/universal/img/logo.png
However, in my prod environment with debugging off and all the above steps taken, this also shows up as /static/universal/img/logo.png - until I set the STATIC_URL to allstatic
How can I be sure I am using the allstatic mapping I set in the pythonanywhere console? And does STATIC_URL affect whether I am using it or not?

Answer 1

I figured it out.
In order to test that the web console static mapping is working on pythonanywhere, I made the following setting explicit and then commented out AppDirectoriesFinder
STATICFILES_FINDERS = [
'django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.FileSystemFinder',
#'django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.AppDirectoriesFinder',
]
This ensures that app directories aren't being looked at to find static files - it will require the Web Console page mapping (or an entry in STATICFILES_DIRS which is empty by default) to be set up correctly to find files.
Doing this I was able to find that my previous STATIC_URL setting of 'static/' rather than 'allstatic/' had in fact been failing to use the mapping - something previously obscured by the fact that both /static/universal/img/logo.png and /allstatic/universal/img/logo.png seemed to work.
(It's interesting that the app level /static locations still work on pythonanywhere with debug turned off - I suspect this fact was muddling me a bit).