Fix Deployment Static Files Conflict

[sonerkuyar]

Description

When accessing Swagger UI at /api/swagger/, the required static files (e.g., swagger-ui-bundle.js) were not loading correctly. Instead, the React app's static files were being served, causing the following error:

Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected token '<'

This occurred because both the frontend and backend static files were being served from the same path (/static/), leading to a conflict.

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Acceptance Criteria

• [ ] Swagger UI is reachable by users.
  ...

Reviewer:

This issue will be reviewed by: @ounuvar @ozankaymak

[sonerkuyar]

Problem can be seen due to different reasons but no solutions works for me at different discussions Swagger issue

Steps I Took

1. Checked network requests in the browser and saw that requests to /static/... were serving the React app's files instead of the Swagger files.
2. Updated the Nginx configuration to explicitly route backend static files under /api/static/ and frontend files under /static/. However, the issue persisted because the backend was still generating static file URLs starting with /static/, which conflicted with the React app.

What Didn’t Work

• Adding an Nginx rule for /api/static/ without updating the Django STATIC_URL caused inconsistencies because the backend was still pointing to /static/.

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Solution

Steps That Worked

1. Updated the STATIC_URL setting in settings.py to /api/static/:

   STATIC_URL = '/api/static/'

   This ensured that all backend static files were served under /api/static/.

2. Ran the collectstatic command to collect all static files into the correct directory:

   python manage.py collectstatic

3. Adjusted the Nginx configuration to serve backend static files from /api/static/:

   location /api/static/ {
      alias /root/bounswe2024group12/app/backend/staticfiles/;  # Adjusted to the actual path
      expires 1y;  # Cache files for better performance
      access_log off;
   }

4. Restarted Nginx to apply the changes:

   sudo systemctl reload nginx

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Result

I've made appropriate changes at deployment machine and fixed the error.