Documents overview¶

Including 'wagtail.documents' in INSTALLED_APPS¶

To use the wagtail.documents app, you need to include it in the INSTALLED_APPS list in your Django project’s settings. Simply add it to the list like this:

# settings.py

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    # ...
    'wagtail.documents',
    # ...
]

Setting up URLs¶

Next, you need to set up URLs for the wagtail.documents app. You can include these URLs in your project’s main urls.py file. To do this, add the following lines:

# urls.py

from wagtail.documents import urls as wagtaildocs_urls

urlpatterns = [
    # ...
    path('documents/', include(wagtaildocs_urls)),
    # ...
]

New documents saved are stored in the reference index by default.

Using documents in a Page¶

To include a document file in a Wagtail page, you can use FieldPanel in your page model.

Here’s an example:

# models.py

from wagtail.admin.panels import FieldPanel
from wagtail.documents import get_document_model


class YourPage(Page):
    # ...
    document = models.ForeignKey(
        get_document_model(),
        null=True,
        blank=True,
        on_delete=models.SET_NULL,
    )

    content_panels = Page.content_panels + [
        # ...
        FieldPanel('document'),
    ]

This allows you to select a document file when creating or editing a page, and link to it in your page template.

Here’s an example template to access the document field and render it:

{% extends "base.html" %}
{% block content %}
    {% if page.document %}
        <h2>Document: {{ page.document.title }}</h2>
        <p>File Type: {{ page.document.file_extension }}</p>
        <a href="{{ page.document.url }}" target="_blank">View Document</a>
    {% else %}
        <p>No document attached to this page.</p>
    {% endif %}
    <div>{{ page.body }}</div>
{% endblock %}

Using documents within RichTextFields¶

Links to documents can be made in pages using the RichTextField. By default, Wagtail will include the features for adding links to documents see Limiting features in a rich text field.

You can either exclude or include these by passing the features to your RichTextField. In the example below we create a RichTextField with only documents and basic formatting.

# models.py
from wagtail.fields import RichTextField

class BlogPage(Page):
    # ...other fields
    document_footnotes = RichTextField(
        blank=True,
        features=["bold", "italic", "ol", "document-link"]
    )

    panels = [
        # ...other panels
        FieldPanel("document_footnotes"),
    ]

Using documents within StreamField¶

StreamField provides a content editing model suitable for pages that do not follow a fixed structure. To add links to documents using StreamField, include it in your models and also include the DocumentChooserBlock.

Create a Page model with a StreamField named doc and a DocumentChooserBlock named doc_link inside the field:

# models.py

from wagtail.fields import StreamField
from wagtail.documents.blocks import DocumentChooserBlock


class BlogPage(Page):
    # ... other fields

    documents = StreamField([
            ('document', DocumentChooserBlock())
        ],
        null=True,
        blank=True,
        use_json_field=True,
    )

    panels = [
        # ... other panels
        FieldPanel("documents"),
    ]

In blog_page.html, add the following block of code to display the document link in the page:

{% for block in page.documents %}
    <a href="{{ block.value.url }}">{{ block.value.title }}</a>
{% endfor %}

Working documents and collections¶

Documents in Wagtail can be organized within collections. Collections provide a way to group related documents. You can cross-link documents between collections and make them accessible through different parts of your site.

Here’s an example:

from wagtail.documents import get_document_model

class PageWithCollection(Page):
    collection = models.ForeignKey(
        "wagtailcore.Collection",
        null=True,
        blank=True,
        on_delete=models.SET_NULL,
        related_name='+',
        verbose_name='Document Collection',
    )

    content_panels = Page.content_panels + [
        FieldPanel("collection"),
    ]

    def get_context(self, request):
        context = super().get_context(request)
        documents = get_document_model().objects.filter(collection=self.collection)
        context['documents'] = documents
        return context

Here’s an example template to access the document collection and render it:

{% extends "base.html" %}
{% load wagtailcore_tags %}

{% block content %}
    {% if documents %}
    <h3>Documents:</h3>
    <ul>
        {% for document in documents %}
        <li>
            <a href="{{ document.url }}" target="_blank">{{ document.title }}</a>
        </li>
        {% endfor %}
    </ul>
    {% endif %}
{% endblock %}

Making documents private¶

If you want to restrict access to certain documents, you can place them in private collections.

Private collections are not publicly accessible, and their contents are only available to users with the appropriate permissions.

API access¶

Documents in Wagtail can be accessed through the API via the wagtail.documents.api.v2.views.DocumentsAPIViewSet. This allows you to programmatically interact with documents, retrieve their details, and perform various operations.

For more details, you can refer to the API section that provides additional information and usage examples.