Changelog#

6.6.0 (2023-10-11)#

  • Support Django 5.0.

  • Drop Python 3.7 support.

6.5.0 (2023-06-16)#

  • Support Python 3.12.

  • Changed documentation site URL from https://whitenoise.evans.io/ to https://whitenoise.readthedocs.io/.

6.4.0 (2023-02-25)#

  • Support Django 4.2.

  • Remove further support for byte strings from the root and prefix arguments to WhiteNoise, and Django’s STATIC_ROOT setting. Like in the previous release, this seems to be a remnant of Python 2 support. Again, this change may be backwards incompatible for a small number of projects, but it’s unlikely. Django does not support STATIC_ROOT being a byte string.

6.3.0 (2023-01-03)#

  • Add some video file extensions to be ignored during compression. Since such files are already heavily compressed, further compression rarely helps.

    Thanks to Jon Ribbens in PR #431.

  • Remove the behaviour of decoding byte strings passed for settings that take strings. This seemed to be left around from supporting Python 2. This change may be backwards incompatible for a small number of projects.

  • Document “hidden” feature of setting max_age to None to disable the Cache-Control header.

  • Drop support for working as old-style Django middleware, as support was removed in Django 2.0.

6.2.0 (2022-06-05)#

  • Support Python 3.11.

  • Support Django 4.1.

6.1.0 (2022-05-10)#

  • Drop support for Django 2.2, 3.0, and 3.1.

6.0.0 (2022-02-10)#

  • Drop support for Python 3.5 and 3.6.

  • Add support for Python 3.9 and 3.10.

  • Drop support for Django 1.11, 2.0, and 2.1.

  • Add support for Django 4.0.

  • Import new MIME types from Nginx, changes:

    • .avif files are now served with the image/avif MIME type.

    • Open Document files with extensions .odg, .odp, .ods, and .odt are now served with their respective application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.* MIME types.

  • The whitenoise.__version__ attribute has been removed. Use importlib.metadata.version() to check the version of Whitenoise if you need to.

  • Requests using the Range header can no longer read beyond the end of the requested range.

    Thanks to Richard Tibbles in PR #322.

  • Treat empty and "*" values for Accept-Encoding as if the client doesn’t support any encoding.

    Thanks to Richard Tibbles in PR #323.

5.3.0 (2021-07-16)#

  • Gracefully handle unparsable If-Modified-Since headers (thanks @danielegozzi).

  • Test against Django 3.2 (thanks @jhnbkr).

  • Add mimetype for Markdown (.md) files (thanks @bz2).

  • Various documentation improvements (thanks @PeterJCLaw and @AliRn76).

5.2.0 (2020-08-04)#

  • Add support for relative STATIC_URLs in settings, as allowed in Django 3.1.

  • Add mimetype for .mjs (JavaScript module) files and use recommended text/javascript mimetype for .js files (thanks @hanswilw).

  • Various documentation improvements (thanks @lukeburden).

5.1.0 (2020-05-20)#

5.0.1 (2019-12-12)#

  • Fix packaging to indicate only Python 3.5+ compatibiity (thanks @mdalp).

5.0 (2019-12-10)#

Note

This is a major version bump, but only because it removes Python 2 compatibility. If you were already running under Python 3 then there should be no breaking changes.

WhiteNoise is now tested on Python 3.5–3.8 and Django 2.0–3.0.

Other changes include:

  • Fix incompatibility with Django 3.0 which caused problems with Safari (details here). Thanks @paltman and @giilby for diagnosing.

  • Lots of improvements to the test suite (including switching to py.test). Thanks @NDevox and @Djailla.

4.1.4 (2019-09-24)#

  • Make tests more deterministic and easier to run outside of tox.

  • Fix Fedora packaging issue.

  • Use Black to format all code.

4.1.3 (2019-07-13)#

  • Fix handling of zero-valued mtimes which can occur when running on some filesystems (thanks @twosigmajab for reporting).

  • Fix potential path traversal attack while running in autorefresh mode on Windows (thanks @phith0n for reporting). This is a good time to reiterate that autofresh mode is never intended for production use.

4.1.2 (2019-11-19)#

  • Add correct MIME type for WebAssembly, which is required for files to be executed (thanks @mdboom ).

  • Stop accessing the FILE_CHARSET Django setting which was almost entirely unused and is now deprecated (thanks @timgraham).

4.1.1 (2018-11-12)#

4.1 (2018-09-12)#

  • Silenced spurious warning about missing directories when in development (i.e “autorefresh”) mode.

  • Support supplying paths as Pathlib instances, rather than just strings (thanks @browniebroke).

  • Add a new CompressedStaticFilesStorage backend to support applying compression without applying Django’s hash-versioning process.

  • Documentation improvements.

4.0 (2018-08-10)#

Note

Breaking changes The latest version of WhiteNoise removes some options which were deprecated in the previous major release:

  • The WSGI integration option for Django (which involved editing wsgi.py) has been removed. Instead, you should add WhiteNoise to your middleware list in settings.py and remove any reference to WhiteNoise from wsgi.py. See the documentation for more details.

    (The pure WSGI integration is still available for non-Django apps.)

  • The whitenoise.django.GzipManifestStaticFilesStorage alias has now been removed. Instead you should use the correct import path: whitenoise.storage.CompressedManifestStaticFilesStorage.

If you are not using either of these integration options you should have no issues upgrading to the latest version.

Removed Python 3.3 Support

Removed support for Python 3.3 since it’s end of life was in September 2017.

Index file support

WhiteNoise now supports serving index files for directories (e.g. serving /example/index.html at /example/). It also creates redirects so that visiting the index file directly, or visiting the URL without a trailing slash will redirect to the correct URL.

Range header support (“byte serving”)

WhiteNoise now respects the HTTP Range header which allows a client to request only part of a file. The main use for this is in serving video files to iOS devices as Safari refuses to play videos unless the server supports the Range header.

ETag support

WhiteNoise now adds ETag headers to files using the same algorithm used by nginx. This gives slightly better caching behaviour than relying purely on Last Modified dates (although not as good as creating immutable files using something like ManifestStaticFilesStorage, which is still the best option if you can use it).

If you need to generate your own ETags headers for any reason you can define a custom add_headers_function.

Remove requirement to run collectstatic

By setting WHITENOISE_USE_FINDERS to True files will be served directly from their original locations (usually in STATICFILES_DIRS or app static subdirectories) without needing to be collected into STATIC_ROOT by the collectstatic command. This was always the default behaviour when in DEBUG mode but previously it wasn’t possible to enable this behaviour in production. For small apps which aren’t using the caching and compression features of the more advanced storage backends this simplifies the deployment process by removing the need to run collectstatic as part of the build step – in fact, it’s now possible not to have any build step at all.

Customisable immutable files test

WhiteNoise ships with code which detects when you are using Django’s ManifestStaticFilesStorage backend and sends optimal caching headers for files which are guaranteed not to change. If you are using a different system for generating cacheable files then you might need to supply your own function for detecting such files. Previously this required subclassing WhiteNoise, but now you can use the WHITENOISE_IMMUTABLE_FILE_TEST setting.

Fix runserver_nostatic to work with Channels

The old implementation of runserver_nostatic (which disables Django’s default static file handling in development) did not work with Channels, which needs its own runserver implementation. The runserver_nostatic command has now been rewritten so that it should work with Channels and with any other app which provides its own runserver.

Reduced storage requirements for static files

The new WHITENOISE_KEEP_ONLY_HASHED_FILES setting reduces the number of files in STATIC_ROOT by half by storing files only under their hashed names (e.g. app.db8f2edc0c8a.js), rather than also keeping a copy with the original name (e.g. app.js).

Improved start up performance

When in production mode (i.e. when autorefresh is disabled), WhiteNoise scans all static files when the application starts in order to be able to serve them as efficiently and securely as possible. For most applications this makes no noticeable difference to start up time, however for applications with very large numbers of static files this process can take some time. In WhiteNoise 4.0 the file scanning code has been rewritten to do the minimum possible amount of filesystem access which should make the start up process considerably faster.

Windows Testing

WhiteNoise has always aimed to support Windows as well as *NIX platforms but we are now able to run the test suite against Windows as part of the CI process which should ensure that we can maintain Windows compatibility in future.

Modification times for compressed files

The compressed storage backend (which generates Gzip and Brotli compressed files) now ensures that compressed files have the same modification time as the originals. This only makes a difference if you are using the compression backend with something other than WhiteNoise to actually serve the files, which very few users do.

Replaced brotlipy with official Brotli Python Package

Since the official Brotli project offers a Brotli Python package brotlipy has been replaced with Brotli.

Furthermore a brotli key has been added to extras_require which allows installing WhiteNoise and Brotli together like this:

pip install whitenoise[brotli]

3.3.1 (2017-09-23)#

  • Fix issue with the immutable file test when running behind a CDN which rewrites paths (thanks @lskillen).

3.3.0 (2017-01-26)#

  • Support the new immutable Cache-Control header. This gives better caching behaviour for immutable resources than simply setting a large max age.

3.2.3 (2017-01-04)#

  • Gracefully handle invalid byte sequences in URLs.

  • Gracefully handle filenames which are too long for the filesystem.

  • Send correct Content-Type for Adobe’s crossdomain.xml files.

3.2.2 (2016-09-26)#

  • Convert any config values supplied as byte strings to text to avoid runtime encoding errors when encountering non-ASCII filenames.

3.2.1 (2016-08-09)#

  • Handle non-ASCII URLs correctly when using the wsgi.py integration.

  • Fix exception triggered when a static files “finder” returned a directory rather than a file.

3.2 (2016-05-27)#

  • Add support for the new-style middleware classes introduced in Django 1.10. The same WhiteNoiseMiddleware class can now be used in either the old MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES list or the new MIDDLEWARE list.

  • Fixed a bug where incorrect Content-Type headers were being sent on 304 Not Modified responses (thanks @oppianmatt).

  • Return Vary and Cache-Control headers on 304 responses, as specified by the RFC.

3.1 (2016-05-15)#

  • Add new WHITENOISE_STATIC_PREFIX setting to give flexibility in supporting non-standard deployment configurations e.g. serving the application somewhere other than the domain root.

  • Fix bytes/unicode bug when running with Django 1.10 on Python 2.7

3.0 (2016-03-23)#

Note

The latest version of WhiteNoise contains some small breaking changes. Most users will be able to upgrade without any problems, but some less-used APIs have been modified:

  • The setting WHITENOISE_GZIP_EXCLUDE_EXTENSIONS has been renamed to WHITENOISE_SKIP_COMPRESS_EXTENSIONS.

  • The CLI compression utility has moved from python -m whitenoise.gzip to python -m whitenoise.compress.

  • The now redundant gzipstatic management command has been removed.

  • WhiteNoise no longer uses the system mimetypes files, so if you are serving particularly obscure filetypes you may need to add their mimetypes explicitly using the new mimetypes setting.

  • Older versions of Django (1.4-1.7) and Python (2.6) are no longer supported. If you need support for these platforms you can continue to use WhiteNoise 2.x.

  • The whitenoise.django.GzipManifestStaticFilesStorage storage backend has been moved to whitenoise.storage.CompressedManifestStaticFilesStorage. The old import path will continue to work for now, but users are encouraged to update their code to use the new path.

Simpler, cleaner Django middleware integration

WhiteNoise can now integrate with Django by adding a single line to MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES without any need to edit wsgi.py. This also means that WhiteNoise plays nicely with other middleware classes such as SecurityMiddleware, and that it is fully compatible with the new Channels system. See the updated documentation for details.

Brotli compression support

Brotli is the modern, more efficient alternative to gzip for HTTP compression. To benefit from smaller files and faster page loads, just install the brotlipy library, update your requirements.txt and WhiteNoise will take care of the rest. See the documentation for details.

Simpler customisation

It’s now possible to add custom headers to WhiteNoise without needing to create a subclass, using the new add_headers_function setting.

Use WhiteNoise in development with Django

There’s now an option to force Django to use WhiteNoise in development, rather than its own static file handling. This results in more consistent behaviour between development and production environments and fewer opportunities for bugs and surprises. See the documentation for details.

Improved mimetype handling

WhiteNoise now ships with its own mimetype definitions (based on those shipped with nginx) instead of relying on the system ones, which can vary between environments. There is a new mimetypes configuration option which makes it easy to add additional type definitions if needed.

Thanks

A big thank-you to Ed Morley and Tim Graham for their contributions to this release.

2.0.6 (2015-11-15)#

  • Rebuild with latest version of wheel to get extras_require support.

2.0.5 (2015-11-15)#

  • Add missing argparse dependency for Python 2.6 (thanks @movermeyer)).

2.0.4 (2015-09-20)#

  • Report path on MissingFileError (thanks @ezheidtmann).

2.0.3 (2015-08-18)#

  • Add __version__ attribute.

2.0.2 (2015-07-03)#

  • More helpful error message when STATIC_URL is set to the root of a domain (thanks @dominicrodger).

2.0.1 (2015-06-28)#

  • Add support for Python 2.6.

  • Add a more helpful error message when attempting to import DjangoWhiteNoise before DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE is defined.

2.0 (2015-06-20)#

  • Add an autorefresh mode which picks up changes to static files made after application startup (for use in development).

  • Add a use_finders mode for DjangoWhiteNoise which finds files in their original directories without needing them collected in STATIC_ROOT (for use in development). Note, this is only useful if you don’t want to use Django’s default runserver behaviour.

  • Remove the follow_symlinks argument from add_files and now always follow symlinks.

  • Support extra mimetypes which Python doesn’t know about by default (including .woff2 format)

  • Some internal refactoring. Note, if you subclass WhiteNoise to add custom behaviour you may need to make some small changes to your code.

1.0.6 (2014-12-12)#

  • Fix unhelpful exception inside make_helpful_exception on Python 3 (thanks @abbottc).

1.0.5 (2014-11-25)#

  • Fix error when attempting to gzip empty files (thanks @ryanrhee).

1.0.4 (2014-11-14)#

  • Don’t attempt to gzip .woff files as they’re already compressed.

  • Base decision to gzip on compression ratio achieved, so we don’t incur gzip overhead just to save a few bytes.

  • More helpful error message from collectstatic if CSS files reference missing assets.

1.0.3 (2014-06-08)#

  • Fix bug in Last Modified date handling (thanks to Atsushi Odagiri for spotting).

1.0.2 (2014-04-29)#

  • Set the default max_age parameter in base class to be what the docs claimed it was.

1.0.1 (2014-04-18)#

  • Fix path-to-URL conversion for Windows.

  • Remove cruft from packaging manifest.

1.0 (2014-04-14)#

  • First stable release.