Django won't refresh staticfiles

Question

This is annoying. I have a javascript file referenced on a django template:

Answer 1

You need to bust the browser cache. This template tag will output a time based uuid when DEBUG=True. Otherwise it will look for a PROJECT_VERSION environment variable. If that is not found it will output a static version number.

import os
import uuid
from django import template                                                                                                              
from django.conf import settings                                                                                                         

register = template.Library()                                                                                                            

@register.simple_tag(name='cache_bust')                                                                                                  
def cache_bust():                                                                                                                        

    if settings.DEBUG:                                                                                                                   
        version = uuid.uuid1()                                                                                                           
    else:                                                                                                                                
        version = os.environ.get('PROJECT_VERSION')                                                                                       
        if version is None:                                                                                                              
            version = '1'                                                                                                                

    return '__v__={version}'.format(version=version)

You would use in a template like this:

{% load cache_bust %}

and here is the resulting output: