Hi @aminalaee

As I understand it, with this PR StaticFiles(packages=["external"], directory="static") would look for static assets in /path/to/external/static, correct?

But I don't think that's what we want. Currently, the behavior is that StaticFiles(directory=..., packages=...) adds directory and one directory per package — we can see from from how directories is populated in the function at hand here.

I'm wondering if we should be considering this API instead:

StaticFiles(
    directory=...,  # An independent directory that's unrelated to `packages` (as currently)
    packages=[
        "bootstrap4",  # Default, resolves to bootstrap4/statics
        ("whatevs", "dist"),  # Explicit subdir, resolves to "whatevs/dist"
    ],
)

And then do:

for package in packages or []:
    try:
        package, statics_directory = package
    except ValueError:
        statics_directory = "statics"

    ...

@florimondmanca Yes you are right. I have mixed directory and packages and the API will be:

StaticFiles(
    directory="statics",
    packages=["bootstrap"],
)

And this will look for "statics" directory inside the "bootstrap" package.

There's a point we didn't take into account, we don't allow sub directories.
Maybe we should consider this too, directory is independant as you said:

StaticFiles(packages=["bootstrap.dir.statics"])

I'm happy to change this PR if we have a conclusion.

@aminalaee My API suggestion is on the same line than your second suggestion, yes — allowing to specify a per-package target sub-directory. I'd say let's do a single path item and avoid the problem of dealing with OS-dependent path representation for now, which is why I suggested a "string or 2-tuple" representation. WDYT?

@florimondmanca I was thinking to handle the sub-directories in an OS-independant way before another issue comes up mentioning that.

I think that makes sense for now, I'll make directory independent and go with the tuple option.

I left a comment on #1265 in case anyone has practical feedback on this, before we merge and include this in the next Starlette release.

@florimondmanca That looks like it would solve the issue myself and @bram2000 were having in #1265 👍🏻

@florimondmanca

I have confused
app.mount("/static", StaticFiles(directory="./static"), name="static")

python main.py is ok, when I bundle py to a exe., I even mapping a static folder in the root folder, how to specify this directory value is the best

if. I use this. ,still not found

File "/Users/wenke/github/tiktoka-studio-uploader-genius/src/app/fastapiserver.py", line 31, in
app.mount("/static", StaticFiles(directory="static"), name="static")
File "/Users/wenke/github/tiktoka-studio-uploader-genius/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/starlette/staticfiles.py", line 57, in init
raise RuntimeError(f"Directory '{directory}' does not exist")
RuntimeError: Directory 'static' does not exist

If I understand correctly you are shipping your package as an installable, so you would need to use the StaticFiles(packages=["name_of_my_package"]) here.,

if i understand correctly, there is 2 options for me here,
option 1 :treat static as a folder in my own package,

src/app/static

you should use this,

app.mount("/static", StaticFiles(packages=[('src.app','static')]), name="static")

the other option is in the root folder of project.
/static

app.mount("/static", StaticFiles(directory="static"), name="static")

it seems you can have directory and packages both there

app.mount("/static", StaticFiles(directory="static",packages=[('src.app','static')]), name="static")