Wagtail API v2 Usage Guide¶
The Wagtail API module exposes a public, read-only, JSON-formatted API which can be used by external clients (such as a mobile app) or the site’s frontend.
This document is intended for developers using the API exposed by Wagtail. For documentation on how to enable the API module in your Wagtail site, see Wagtail API v2 Configuration Guide
Contents
Fetching content¶
To fetch content over the API, perform a GET
request against one of the
following endpoints:
Pages
/api/v2/pages/
Images
/api/v2/images/
Documents
/api/v2/documents/
Note
The available endpoints and their URLs may vary from site to site, depending on how the API has been configured.
Example response¶
Each response contains the list of items (items
) and the total count
(meta.total_count
). The total count is irrespective of pagination.
GET /api/v2/endpoint_name/
HTTP 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json
{
"meta": {
"total_count": "total number of results"
},
"items": [
{
"id": 1,
"meta": {
"type": "app_name.ModelName",
"detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v2/endpoint_name/1/"
},
"field": "value"
},
{
"id": 2,
"meta": {
"type": "app_name.ModelName",
"detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v2/endpoint_name/2/"
},
"field": "different value"
}
]
}
Custom page fields in the API¶
Wagtail sites contain many page types, each with their own set of fields. The
pages
endpoint will only expose the common fields by default (such as
title
and slug
).
To access custom page fields with the API, select the page type with the
?type
parameter. This will filter the results to only include pages of that
type but will also make all the exported custom fields for that type available
in the API.
For example, to access the published_date
, body
and authors
fields
on the blog.BlogPage
model in the configuration docs:
GET /api/v2/pages/?type=blog.BlogPage&fields=published_date,body,authors(name)
HTTP 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json
{
"meta": {
"total_count": 10
},
"items": [
{
"id": 1,
"meta": {
"type": "blog.BlogPage",
"detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v2/pages/1/",
"html_url": "http://www.example.com/blog/my-blog-post/",
"slug": "my-blog-post",
"first_published_at": "2016-08-30T16:52:00Z"
},
"title": "Test blog post",
"published_date": "2016-08-30",
"authors": [
{
"id": 1,
"meta": {
"type": "blog.BlogPageAuthor",
},
"name": "Karl Hobley"
}
]
},
...
]
}
Note
Only fields that have been explicitly exported by the developer may be used
in the API. This is done by adding a api_fields
attribute to the page
model. You can read about configuration here.
This doesn’t apply to images/documents as there is only one model exposed in
those endpoints. But for projects that have customized image/document models,
the api_fields
attribute can be used to export any custom fields into the
API.
Pagination¶
The number of items in the response can be changed by using the ?limit
parameter (default: 20) and the number of items to skip can be changed by using
the ?offset
parameter.
For example:
GET /api/v2/pages/?offset=20&limit=20
HTTP 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json
{
"meta": {
"total_count": 50
},
"items": [
pages 20 - 40 will be listed here.
]
}
Note
There may be a maximum value for the ?limit
parameter. This can be
modified in your project settings by setting WAGTAILAPI_LIMIT_MAX
to
either a number (the new maximum value) or None
(which disables maximum
value check).
Ordering¶
The results can be ordered by any field by setting the ?order
parameter to
the name of the field to order by.
GET /api/v2/pages/?order=title
HTTP 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json
{
"meta": {
"total_count": 50
},
"items": [
pages will be listed here in ascending title order (a-z)
]
}
The results will be ordered in ascending order by default. This can be changed
to descending order by prefixing the field name with a -
sign.
GET /api/v2/pages/?order=-title
HTTP 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json
{
"meta": {
"total_count": 50
},
"items": [
pages will be listed here in descending title order (z-a)
]
}
Note
Ordering is case-sensitive so lowercase letters are always ordered after uppercase letters when in ascending order.
Multiple ordering¶
Multiple fields can be passed into the ?order
for consecutive ordering.
GET /api/v2/pages/?order=title,-slug
HTTP 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json
{
"meta": {
"total_count": 50
},
"items": [
pages will be ordered by title and for all matching titles (a-z), then sorted by slug (z-a).
]
}
Random ordering¶
Passing random
into the ?order
parameter will make results return in a
random order. If there is no caching, each request will return results in a
different order.
GET /api/v2/pages/?order=random
HTTP 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json
{
"meta": {
"total_count": 50
},
"items": [
pages will be listed here in random order
]
}
Note
It’s not possible to use ?offset
while ordering randomly because
consistent random ordering cannot be guaranteed over multiple requests
(so requests for subsequent pages may return results that also appeared in
previous pages).
Filtering¶
Any field may be used in an exact match filter. Use the filter name as the parameter and the value to match against.
For example, to find a page with the slug “about”:
GET /api/v2/pages/?slug=about
HTTP 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json
{
"meta": {
"total_count": 1
},
"items": [
{
"id": 10,
"meta": {
"type": "standard.StandardPage",
"detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v2/pages/10/",
"html_url": "http://www.example.com/about/",
"slug": "about",
"first_published_at": "2016-08-30T16:52:00Z"
},
"title": "About"
},
]
}
Filtering by tree position (pages only)¶
Pages can additionally be filtered by their relation to other pages in the tree.
The ?child_of
filter takes the id of a page and filters the list of results
to contain only the direct children of that page.
For example, this can be useful for constructing the main menu, by passing the id of the homepage to the filter:
GET /api/v2/pages/?child_of=2&show_in_menus=true
HTTP 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json
{
"meta": {
"total_count": 5
},
"items": [
{
"id": 3,
"meta": {
"type": "blog.BlogIndexPage",
"detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v2/pages/3/",
"html_url": "http://www.example.com/blog/",
"slug": "blog",
"first_published_at": "2016-09-21T13:54:00Z"
},
"title": "About"
},
{
"id": 10,
"meta": {
"type": "standard.StandardPage",
"detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v2/pages/10/",
"html_url": "http://www.example.com/about/",
"slug": "about",
"first_published_at": "2016-08-30T16:52:00Z"
},
"title": "About"
},
...
]
}
The ?ancestor_of
filter takes the id of a page and filters the list
to only include ancestors of that page (parent, grandparent etc.) all the
way down to the site’s root page.
For example, when combined with the type
filter it can be used to
find the particular blog.BlogIndexPage
a blog.BlogPage
belongs
to. By itself, it can be used to construct a breadcrumb trail from
the current page back to the site’s root page.
The ?descendant_of
filter takes the id of a page and filters the list
to only include descendants of that page (children, grandchildren, etc.).
Filtering pages by site¶
By default, the API will look for the site based on the hostname of the request.
In some cases, you might want to query pages belonging to a different site.
The ?site=
filter is used to filter the listing to only include pages that
belong to a specific site. The filter requires the configured hostname of the
site. If you have multiple sites using the same hostname but a different port
number, it’s possible to filter by port number using the format hostname:port
.
For example:
GET /api/v2/pages/?site=demo-site.local
GET /api/v2/pages/?site=demo-site.local:8080
Search¶
Passing a query to the ?search
parameter will perform a full-text search on
the results.
The query is split into “terms” (by word boundary), then each term is normalized (lowercased and unaccented).
For example: ?search=James+Joyce
Search operator¶
The search_operator
specifies how multiple terms in the query should be
handled. There are two possible values:
and
- All terms in the search query (excluding stop words) must exist in each resultor
- At least one term in the search query must exist in each result
The or
operator is generally better than and
as it allows the user to be
inexact with their query and the ranking algorithm will make sure that
irrelevant results are not returned at the top of the page.
The default search operator depends on whether the search engine being used by
the site supports ranking. If it does (Elasticsearch), the operator will default
to or
. Otherwise (database), it will default to and
.
For the same reason, it’s also recommended to use the and
operator when
using ?search
in conjunction with ?order
(as this disables ranking).
For example: ?search=James+Joyce&order=-first_published_at&search_operator=and
Special filters for internationalized sites¶
When WAGTAIL_I18N_ENABLED
is set to True
(see
Enabling internationalization for more details) two new filters are made
available on the pages endpoint.
Filtering pages by locale¶
The ?locale=
filter is used to filter the listing to only include pages in
the specified locale. For example:
GET /api/v2/pages/?locale=en-us
HTTP 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json
{
"meta": {
"total_count": 5
},
"items": [
{
"id": 10,
"meta": {
"type": "standard.StandardPage",
"detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v2/pages/10/",
"html_url": "http://www.example.com/usa-page/",
"slug": "usa-page",
"first_published_at": "2016-08-30T16:52:00Z",
"locale": "en-us"
},
"title": "American page"
},
...
]
}
Getting translations of a page¶
The ?translation_of
filter is used to filter the listing to only include
pages that are a translation of the specified page ID. For example:
GET /api/v2/pages/?translation_of=10
HTTP 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json
{
"meta": {
"total_count": 2
},
"items": [
{
"id": 11,
"meta": {
"type": "standard.StandardPage",
"detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v2/pages/11/",
"html_url": "http://www.example.com/gb-page/",
"slug": "gb-page",
"first_published_at": "2016-08-30T16:52:00Z",
"locale": "en-gb"
},
"title": "British page"
},
{
"id": 12,
"meta": {
"type": "standard.StandardPage",
"detail_url": "http://api.example.com/api/v2/pages/12/",
"html_url": "http://www.example.com/fr-page/",
"slug": "fr-page",
"first_published_at": "2016-08-30T16:52:00Z",
"locale": "fr"
},
"title": "French page"
},
]
}
Fields¶
By default, only a subset of the available fields are returned in the response.
The ?fields
parameter can be used to both add additional fields to the
response and remove default fields that you know you won’t need.
Additional fields¶
Additional fields can be added to the response by setting ?fields
to a
comma-separated list of field names you want to add.
For example, ?fields=body,feed_image
will add the body
and feed_image
fields to the response.
This can also be used across relationships. For example,
?fields=body,feed_image(width,height)
will nest the width
and height
of the image in the response.
All fields¶
Setting ?fields
to an asterisk (*
) will add all available fields to the
response. This is useful for discovering what fields have been exported.
For example: ?fields=*
Removing fields¶
Fields you know that you do not need can be removed by prefixing the name with a
-
and adding it to ?fields
.
For example, ?fields=-title,body
will remove title
and add body
.
This can also be used with the asterisk. For example, ?fields=*,-body
adds all fields except for body
.
Removing all default fields¶
To specify exactly the fields you need, you can set the first item in fields to
an underscore (_
) which removes all default fields.
For example, ?fields=_,title
will only return the title field.
Detail views¶
You can retrieve a single object from the API by appending its id to the end of the URL. For example:
Pages
/api/v2/pages/1/
Images
/api/v2/images/1/
Documents
/api/v2/documents/1/
All exported fields will be returned in the response by default. You can use the
?fields
parameter to customize which fields are shown.
For example: /api/v2/pages/1/?fields=_,title,body
will return just the
title
and body
of the page with the id of 1.
Finding pages by HTML path¶
You can find an individual page by its HTML path using the /api/v2/pages/find/?html_path=<path>
view.
This will return either a 302
redirect response to that page’s detail view, or a 404
not found response.
For example: /api/v2/pages/find/?html_path=/
always redirects to the homepage of the site
Default endpoint fields¶
Common fields¶
These fields are returned by every endpoint.
id
(number)
The unique ID of the object
Note
Except for page types, every other content type has its own ID space
so you must combine this with the type
field in order to get a
unique identifier for an object.
type
(string)
The type of the object in app_label.ModelName
format
detail_url
(string)
The URL of the detail view for the object
Pages¶
title
(string)
meta.slug
(string)
meta.show_in_menus
(boolean)
meta.seo_title
(string)
meta.search_description
(string)
meta.first_published_at
(date/time)
These values are taken from their corresponding fields on the page
meta.html_url
(string)
If the site has an HTML frontend that’s generated by Wagtail, this
field will be set to the URL of this page
meta.parent
Nests some information about the parent page (only available on detail
views)
meta.alias_of
(dictionary)
If the page marked as an alias return the original page ID and full URL
Images¶
title
(string)
The value of the image’s title field. Within Wagtail, this is used in
the image’s alt
HTML attribute.
width
(number)
height
(number)
The size of the original image file
meta.tags
(list of strings)
A list of tags associated with the image
Documents¶
title
(string)
The value of the document’s title field
meta.tags
(list of strings)
A list of tags associated with the document
meta.download_url
(string)
A URL to the document file
Changes since v1¶
Breaking changes¶
The results list in listing responses has been renamed to
items
(was previously eitherpages
,images
ordocuments
)
Major features¶
The
fields
parameter has been improved to allow removing fields, adding all fields, and customizing nested fields
Minor features¶
html_url
,slug
,first_published_at
,expires_at
, andshow_in_menus
fields have been added to the pages endpointdownload_url
field has been added to the documents endpointMultiple page types can be specified in
type
parameter on page endpointtrue
andfalse
may now be used when filtering boolean fieldsorder
can now be used in conjunction withsearch
search_operator
parameter was added