TemplateSyntaxError 'staticfiles' is not a valid tag library'

Question

I'm having a really strange issue trying to get the staticfiles taglib working in my application. I'm essentially getting the following error:

'staticfiles' is not a valid tag library: Template library staticfiles not found, tried django.templatetags.staticfiles,django.contrib.admin.templatetags.staticfiles

Here's my template which is throwing this error:

{% load staticfiles %}
<html>
    <head>
        {% block stylesheets %}
        <link rel="stylesheet" href="{% static "styles/bootstrap-1.2.0.min.css" %}">
        {% endblock %}
        <title>{% block title %}Tzibor{% endblock %}</title>
    </head>
    <body>
        <h1>It Works!</h1>
        {% block scripts %}
        <script type="text/javascript" src="{% static "scripts/jquery-1.6.2.min.js" %}"></script>
        {% endblock %}
    </body>
</html>

Here's my settings.py:

DEBUG = True
TEMPLATE_DEBUG = DEBUG

ADMINS = (

)

MANAGERS = ADMINS

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.sqlite3', 
        'NAME': '/tmp/project.db',
        'USER': '',                    
        'PASSWORD': '',
        'HOST': '',
        'PORT': '',
    }
}

TIME_ZONE = 'UTC'
LANGUAGE_CODE = 'en-us'

SITE_ID = 1

USE_I18N = True
USE_L10N = True
MEDIA_ROOT = '' # abs fs path to upload dir
MEDIA_URL = ''
STATIC_URL = '/static/'

ADMIN_MEDIA_PREFIX = '/media/'

SECRET_KEY = '4qo&twl!=ty!n%1@h2nidz^ie@$^uu@*pz)(ol%ise0&g6*@&_'

#TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS = (
#   "django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth",
#   "django.core.context_processors.debug",
#   "django.core.context_processors.i18n",
#   "django.core.context_processors.media",
#   "django.core.context_processors.static",
#   "django.contrib.messages.context_processors.messages",
#)

TEMPLATE_LOADERS = (
    'django.template.loaders.filesystem.Loader',
    'django.template.loaders.app_directories.Loader',
    'django.template.loaders.eggs.Loader',
)

TEMPLATE_DIRS = (

)

MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES = (
    'django.middleware.common.CommonMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.sessions.middleware.SessionMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.csrf.CsrfViewMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.auth.middleware.AuthenticationMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.messages.middleware.MessageMiddleware',
)

ROOT_URLCONF = 'project.urls'

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.sites',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.admin',
    'django.contrib.admindocs',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',
    'project.web',
    'south',
)

Essentially, I followed the guide available in Django's documentation on how to set up the static serving application, and got this error. Can anyone see what the issue is? Am I missing something?

Full stacktrace here.

What happens when you go into the shell and type import staticfiles? — Jordan Reiter
I guess that you did not set the STATIC_ROOT value in settings. Does manage.py collectstatic work fine? — Ski
@Skirmantas, had that issue, fixed it, but still getting the error. — Naftuli Kay
AFAIK This is new in the development version not in 1.3. See The first line for the static tag in the docs and compare the doc to version 1.3. — mkriheli

Arthur Neves Arthur Neves · Accepted Answer · 2011-09-06T22:45:12

You probably are running django 1.3 right!?

So, notice the difference between django dev(1.4) and django 1.3:

So if you wanna use "{% load staticfiles %}" u must be using django dev(1.4+)

This is how to use in django 1.3 :

{% load static %}
<img src="{% get_static_prefix %}images/hi.jpg" />

TemplateSyntaxError 'staticfiles' is not a valid tag library'

1 Answers