Creating page models¶
Each page type (a.k.a Content type) in Wagtail is represented by a Django model. All page models must inherit from the wagtail.wagtailcore.models.Page
class.
As all page types are Django models, you can use any field type that Django provides. See Model field reference for a complete list of field types you can use. Wagtail also provides RichTextField
which provides a WYSIWYG editor for editing rich-text content.
Django models
If you’re not yet familiar with Django models, have a quick look at the following links to get you started: Creating models Model syntax
An example Wagtail Page Model¶
This example represents a typical blog post:
from django.db import models
from wagtail.wagtailcore.models import Page
from wagtail.wagtailcore.fields import RichTextField
from wagtail.wagtailadmin.edit_handlers import FieldPanel, MultiFieldPanel
from wagtail.wagtailimages.edit_handlers import ImageChooserPanel
class BlogPage(Page):
body = RichTextField()
date = models.DateField("Post date")
feed_image = models.ForeignKey(
'wagtailimages.Image',
null=True,
blank=True,
on_delete=models.SET_NULL,
related_name='+'
)
content_panels = Page.content_panels + [
FieldPanel('date'),
FieldPanel('body', classname="full"),
]
promote_panels = [
MultiFieldPanel(Page.promote_panels, "Common page configuration"),
ImageChooserPanel('feed_image'),
]
Tip
To keep track of Page
models and avoid class name clashes, it can be helpful to suffix model class names with “Page” e.g BlogPage, ListingIndexPage.
In the example above the BlogPage
class defines three properties: body
, date
, and feed_image
. These are a mix of basic Django models (DateField
), Wagtail fields (RichTextField
), and a pointer to a Wagtail model (Image
).
Below that the content_panels
and promote_panels
lists define the capabilities and layout of the page editing interface in the Wagtail admin. The lists are filled with “panels” and “choosers”, which will provide a fine-grain interface for inputting the model’s content. The ImageChooserPanel
, for instance, lets one browse the image library, upload new images and input image metadata. The RichTextField
is the basic field for creating web-ready website rich text, including text formatting and embedded media like images and video. The Wagtail admin offers other choices for fields, Panels, and Choosers, with the option of creating your own to precisely fit your content without workarounds or other compromises.
Your models may be even more complex, with methods overriding the built-in functionality of the Page
to achieve webdev magic. Or, you can keep your models simple and let Wagtail’s built-in functionality do the work.
Tips¶
Friendly model names¶
Make your model names more friendly to users of Wagtail using Django’s internal Meta
class with a verbose_name
e.g
class HomePage(Page):
...
class Meta:
verbose_name = "Homepage"
When users are given a choice of pages to create, the list of page types is generated by splitting your model names on each of their capital letters. Thus a HomePage
model would be named “Home Page” which is a little clumsy. verbose_name
as in the example above, would change this to read “Homepage” which is slightly more conventional.