Debugging: Part 2

so, “.0003_auto_20190601” means that you did this on June 1 of this year.

After all this, I still get the file path name not the image.

plus the file name in projects/img has changed yet the p1.image shows the old name.

Oh, I get it that I am supposed to get the file path name not the image, but when I invoke the page, the file path name is supposed to deliver the image. Yes?

Yes exactly. You’re supposed to fetch the path of the file from the database as a Python string.

Then the HTML attribute src on your <img> HTML tag will use that file path to link to, and display, the image on your page.

Yes, I do get that and it didn’t work. I am not sure how, but I did fix it.

projects/static/ is the django aggregated directory structure but the video does not address leaving this out as the path/to/the/image.png

Hello @rolandgarceau, thanks for your comment. Could you explain some more what you mean? I’d be happy to clarify if there’s something missing in the video, however I currently don’t quite understand what you’re addressing with your comment. Thanks!

I have done something wrong and I have spent a great deal of time trying to figure it out. It all started when I carelessly typed (in the shell) ps1.save and did not include the (). I got this message. <bound method Model.save of <Pix: Pix object (1)>> when I got through all the steps of changing the data base and redfining the paths to the images (I have 3 instances instead of 2), no matter how many times I try it, I do not get the images and yet checking the database both in the viewer and with the shell shows me that the paths are correct. Also, the “alt” message has never printed. I have found several errors on my own and by reading the error messages. When I check the terminal log for the action, I find this: “GET /static/pixie.img HTTP/1.1” 404 1653 Obviously that is a 404 error and the path is incomplete. The path should read /static/pixie/img/Charlotte.jpg. Here is the relevant code in my html file: <img src=”{% static ‘pixie.img’ %}” alt=”screenshot for pixie”> Earlier, the direct image path did provide the correct image. I have waited a full day and examined this again with the same result. The database entries are correct paths for images and image=CharField(max_length=100) in models.py. Where can I look? Is that “bound” statement a problem?

Hi Reblark.

You’re using the static keyword in your img tag, but your image is not in the static folder. If you are fetching an image from a database you just need {% pixie.img %}. Hope that makes sense.

Hi Ricky. thanks for the response. However, look at line 12 in Martin’s video, Debugging 1, about 5:32, and you will see that he does use the keyword static and the attribute is “image” not “img.” He states that this is a reference to the database, but I thought his database name was Project, not project. He uses project.image. From that point, he just goes to the individual database entries and adds the file path to each image attribute. I have done that and it works fine. But, I still get the file name instead of the image itself. My understanding is that the img tag in the html file is supposed to point at the database which is why he has “<ing srce={% static project.image %}. Does that make sense?

Hey Ricky. Wow, as I pointed out, your suggestion was not quite accurate. But, it was extremely helpful. Essentially, you confirmed for me where the problem was. So, I kept going back to it, looking at it time and time again, experimenting and trying all sorts of things. Then, I saw it, fixed it and it works. So this: <img src=”{% static pix.image %}” alt=”screenshot for pixie”> works and but alt tag still doesn’t work. I don’t care that much, but if you see what is wrong there, I would appreciate knowing it. And. Thank you. You guys are great!

Hi @reblark. To answer your questions:

Naming And Accessing

The model is called Project, the app is called projects. And in the templates, I assign one instance of the Project model, which is equivalent to a row in the database, to the variable name project.

This last part is what allows you to access the images with:

{% for project in projects %}
    <img src="{% static project.image %}" alt="{{ project.title }}">
{% endfor %}

Possible Error Sources

Looking at your problem description, here are some thoughts on what might not have worked correctly, and why:

• project object: project here is a variable that you create in the template. It is not a string. I saw you put it into quotes somewhere, like so: {% static 'pixie.img' %}. This part would only be in quotes if you are hardcoding a path right there in the template. However, you are pulling the path string from the database, therefore you’re referencing the attribute of an object, and that object is represented by a variable, not a string.
• <img src=""> quotes: The HTML specification defines that the values of an HTML element’s attributes, such as src, are to be delivered in double-quotes. That means there need to be double-quotes outside of your Django static template tag. In one example you wrote <img src={% static project.image %}> without the double-quotes. This won’t work in HTML.

I understand that these situations are a bit tricky and not that easy to fully grasp. One example above talks about having too many quotes, the other one about missing quotes… Oh my! 🙄

Keep in mind that the reason for these little specifics is that the web is mixing a bunch of different languages and technologies that need to find ways to work together. And that’s never that easy! 💪

In any case, congratulations for working it out and you’re doing the only right thing, which is repeatedly looking at it, trying to figure out what can be figured out, taking a break, and asking questions if necessary. Then loop and start from the beginning :)

Hope this answer helped to shed some light on what might have been going on.

Cool @Martin I am really enjoying and learning Django from your awesome explanation. Just a short sorta question!

Do we need to implement the makemigration and migrate after each even a single letter changes in the models.py? if so why?

Hi @emalfiza, that’s a great question! The short answer is “no”. :) But that probably doesn’t satisfy your curiosity in this matter (I hope!)

So the slightly longer answer is that there are two aspects to the code in models.py:

1. Code that translates to the database schema
2. Code that handles representation and methods on the model objects in Django

For any code changes that belong into the first category you need to do the migration-dance in order to apply them to your database. For code changes that relate to the second category there’s no need to run migrations, since that code never changes anything in the database in the first place.

Now, what is what? 🤔

1. DB-schema code: Everything that creates a column in the database. These are the lines of code that assign something like models.CharField(...) to a variable name.
2. Django Model object code: Everything else. That means extra methods you could create for your models, or dunder methods (e.g. __str__() for better representation in the Django admin) etc.

So to answer your “why” question: You only need to run makemigrations + migrate if you want to make a change to the database schema. Not all the code in models.py does that, so you don’t need to run migrations on every single letter change. It depends on which letters you change. Hope this helps, and keep investigating!

Sweet you should be proud of yourself @Martin, its an honor learning Django at this point from someone so awesome like you.

Oh, thank you very much for the nice words 😊! Glad my course is helpful for you!

like we registered template folder don’t we need to register static folder ?

Hi @Abishek. Django automatically registers all static folders inside of apps when you leave the default setting in settings.py called APPS_DIRS on True. Counts both for templates and static folders.

But in order to display static files you need to run python manage.py collectstatic. You don’t need to do that during local development, because Django’s Development Server does it for you.

Martin, thanks for this great course. My web page only displays Hello Again!. I have gone over the files and past videos and now I don’t know where else to look to solve this problem. I kinda wish I had a friendly error message!

Hi @superpando, glad you’re liking the course. :) If your page is displaying Hello Again!, then you need to check inside of your views.py file and make sure that it doesn’t simply return the HttpResponse object with that string. Next thing to check is that if it is correctly pointing to a template file, what is the content of that template file. You might have mixed up the templates or might still be pointing to an older version of a view function.

Remember that what gets displayed on your screen goes through the Django Flow:

• urls.py
• views.py
• templates/app_name/your_template.html

Check all of those files and make sure the request flows freely and as you’d expect it to :)

I cannot get either direct link or static db link images to show up.

I can see image in static/projects/img/testproject.pmg

but getting 404 error on load. all other db info shows up.

i modified the image location in the db and verified it.

html {% load static %} <!DOCTYPE html> <html lang=”en”> <head> <meta charset=”UTF-8”> <meta name=”viewport” content=”width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0”> <title>Document</title> </head> <body>

<h1>Projects</h1>

{% for project in projects %}


            <img  src="{% static project.image }" alt="{{ project.description }}">
            <div >
                <h5 >{{ project.title }}</h5>
                <p >{{ project.description }}</p>
                <p >{{ project.image}}</p>

            </div>
        </div>
    </div>
{% endfor %}
</div>

</div> </body> </html>

html page output

Projects this is a test test project this is a test

projects/img/testproject.png

this is a 3nd test test project2 this is a 3nd test

projects/img/testproject.png

django server error: Not Found: /projects/{% static project.image } [07/Jun/2020 03:49:13] “GET /projects/%7B%%20static%20project.image%20%7D HTTP/1.1” 404 2212

disregard my previous message. I found my config issue. I was missing % on one %} and the static img was in a sub folder but wrong folder. I corrected both and all is working now.

Nice job figuring it out! :)

Martin.. few suggestions…

1. I agree with other comments you should use standard variable names when using the shell to work with sqllite interactions in videos.

2. If someone posted their complete project to a public github (with django complete setup) . There are security issues with that being exposed. django SECRET_KEY = in settings.py for one. Also they should turn off debug if they wish to expose new django site to internet. # SECURITY WARNING: don’t run with debug turned on in production! DEBUG = True ( not sure if you mention this in original overview) but should remind in last video very helpful…

3. Would be great if on slides in videos. the page # 1 of 29 was show so can find later in download pdf. quicker. maybe add a roll up cheat sheet of all the commands used in class with a quick refrence.

great overview… looking forward to deeper dive into django classes..

Hi @Bill and thanks for your suggestions. I am not entirely sure I understand all of what you are writing, but here are my thoughts:

• Variable Names: What “standard variable names” are you thinking of, and which other comments mention them? I looked around but I don’t understand what you are referring to.
• Security Concerns: There are indeed some security concerns that you need to address before you deploy your Django webapp, foremost setting DEBUG = False and avoiding to push the SECRET_KEY variable that you use in production to GitHub.

However, this practice project is not designed to take you all the way to deploying your application, which would involve quite a few additional steps. As such, there is no security issue with pushing an unused SECRET_KEY to GitHub, nor with leaving the DEBUG setting as-is. The vulnerabilities only exists when you are working with a live webapp. Then you shouldn’t use the same random SECRET_KEY variable that you pushed to GitHub, and you should set DEBUG = False in your settings.py file.

• Cheat Sheet: I also don’t quite understand what you are asking for in Point 3, but if you are looking for a general Django Cheat Sheet, we currently don’t have one of those. However, you might find what you’re looking for here or here (although they refer to an older version of Django and therefore have some subtle differences)

Hope that helps and let me know if there was something I misunderstood.

Dear Martin, I checked and double checked all the files, and they are accurately emulating your materials. However, I still get the broken image, i.e. blue square with ? in it. Please let me know the error I’m making. Many thanks!

Hi @alazejha, you’ll need to share more specific information so I might be able to help you out. Easiest would be if you shared your code on GitHub and post a link here, then describe what exactly you tried and what is happening instead of what you expect.

You can also compare your code to the Example Project.

Hope that helps and keep trying!

I am running into behavior that I don’t understand. Here’s what I did:

>>> # manage shell
>>> from projects.models import Project
>>> items = Project.objects.all()
>>> items[0].image
'testproject.png'
>>> items[0].image = 'projects/img/testproject.png'
>>> items[0].image
'testproject.png'
# ??? - why didn't this change?

>>> i0 = items[0]
>>> i0.image
'testproject.png'
>>> i0.image = 'projects/img/testproject.png'
>>> i0.image
'projects/img/testproject.png'
# ??? - why does this work and the above doesn't???

# Even more bizarre:
>>> items[0].image
'testproject.png'
# ??? - items[0] is different from i0...

# If I use the id command I can see that items[0] and i0 are
# in fact different objects at different addresses, but I was
# not expecting this.

Perhaps this is so obvious that I can’t see it, but I don’t understand why I can’t change the image field from the items[0] reference. What am I missing?

Can anyone help me understand why the tutor changed image datatype from FilePathField into CharField?

@sornasundaram-c Martin explains this in his previous lesson. In essence, the FilePathField is meant for choosing a filename from an existing folder, while we need to persist the full path of an image in the database.

I wanted to make more friends, so I troubleshooted to fix the static/project/img pathing. First by going into porfolio(django’s management folder), then in settings.py, under STATIC_URL = 'static/' you need to add a list with these variable naming: STATICFILES_DIRS = []. Inside the list, you’ll need to add the shortened URL paths so Django will know to look for more static files.

Your settings should look like this when all is said and done:

STATIC_URL = 'static/'

STATICFILES_DIRS = [
    BASE_DIR / "static/",
    'projects/static/projects/img',
]

Refresh your app and test it out to verify.

See: docs.djangoproject.com/en/4.1/howto/static-files/

Hi. When I run python manage.py makemigrations, it says No changes detected. Please help.

@simma99 The most common reason is not including one of your Django apps in the INSTALLED_APPS constant in the project’s settings.py module. Did you add it there?

@Bartosz Zaczynski I included the Django apps in installed_apps in settings.py but it is still showing no changes detected.

@simma99 Is it possible that you already made migrations but haven’t applied them yet? There could also be a problem with your models, but it’s just guessing on my part.

Hi, Just letting you know following your instructions step by step, I did not get my displayed as you got. So I think there is something definitely missing somewhere, that you have not covered.

@sammyutere Thanks for letting us know. Could you please share a little bit more details about what’s not working and what specific steps you’ve taken following the instructions? What is the discrepancy between the expected and actual results? This way, we’ll be able to better figure out what the issue may be.

Hi, In the section Debugging part 2 from the 2 min mark, when I followed the instructions as you did to display the project image. It did not work for me.

Hi, i’m wondering if somebody can help? i was having some issues with information being correctly displayed in my server after making changes made following the above video. anyway, long story short. i deleted the db.sqlite3 and re-run the migrations etc and now i have a new table but my models.py info is not showing in new sqlite3 database eg, title, description…etc. also my webpage is now blank when refresh it, so it looks like me app is not being recognised. any ideas on how to reinstate the project?

@deebrown2011 if you deleted your db.sqlite3 file, then you also deleted all the data in it. That means that your new database will be empty until you add new data to it, for example using the Django Shell like I did in this course.

@sammyutere can you give us more information on what exactly you did and what happened instead of showing the image? That’ll make it easier to figure out what might have happened.

Hi Martin, thank you for your response. much appreciated.

your response was exactly the solution i was looking for! i was searching for while and the answer was simple.

really appreciate the help.

Glad it worked @deebrown2011 :D