evansd/whitenoise

Clarification for using whitenoise with CDN on digital ocean

BoPeng opened this issue · 2 comments

BoPeng commented

Python Version

3.11.2

Django Version

4.1.6

Package Version

6.4.0

Description

We currently use whitenoise to server static files on DigitalOcean (DO)'s app platform. Since DO Space offers CDN service, we are trying to add CDN support on top of whitenoise. Whereas the documentation is very clear on how to use CDN with cloudcloudfront, I cannot make it work with DO by changing the configuration from

STATICFILES_STORAGE = "whitenoise.storage.CompressedManifestStaticFilesStorage"
STATIC_URL = 'https://mycompany.com/static/'

to

STATICFILES_STORAGE = "whitenoise.storage.CompressedManifestStaticFilesStorage"
STATIC_HOST = 'https://myspace.sfo2.digitaloceanspaces.com/myfolder'
STATIC_URL = STATIC_HOST + "/static/"

The problem is that python manage.py collectstatic takes very long time to run and the static files are not uploaded to DO space.

My questions are:

  1. With the new settings, when and how exactly does whitenoise upload the files to DO Space? As far as I can tell, python manage.py collectstatic put all files under the local staticfiles directory. Without these files uploaded, static files are not served with URLs like https://myspace.sfo2.digitaloceanspaces.com/myfolder/static/favicon.ico .

  2. DO space uses a different URL for its CDN. For example, the CDN URL for https://myspace.sfo2.digitaloceanspaces.com/myfolder/static/favicon.ico would be https://myspace.sfo2.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/myfolder/static/favicon.ico. How would I configure the use of the latter URL? I tried to use the cdn version of STATIC_HOST and the files are not uploaded either.

BoPeng commented

I think I did not pay close attention to the Origin Domain Name part of the documentation. If I understand correctly, whitenoise + CDN works like this

  1. white noise continues to serve static files through https://mycompany.com/static/. This is why STATICFILE_STORAGE should not be changed.
  2. The website tells the client to retrieve static files through CDN, say, https://d4663kmspf1sqa.cloudfront.net/static.
  3. If the file has never been accessed before, the CDN server will grab its content from origin domain name, which is https://mycompany.com/static/. After the first attempt, the file will be cached so subsequent access to static file will be handled by the CDN.

The problem with digital ocean, in my case, is that https://myspace.sfo2.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/myfolder/static/ will only serve files stored on https://myspace.sfo2.digitaloceanspaces.com/myfolder/static/, so whitenoise will not work with my configuration. If I want to serve static files to CDN, I will have to use a boto3 storage to store static files to the bucket, or use cloudfront to point to the https://mycompany.com/static/.

adamchainz commented

Yes, that is correct, thank you for your clear issue report and self-solve!