Wagtail 5.0 release notes

May 2, 2023

What’s new

Django 4.2 support

This release adds support for Django 4.2.

Object usage information on deleting objects

On deleting a page, image, document or snippet, the confirmation screen now provides a summary of where the object is used, allowing users to see the effect that deletion will have elsewhere on the site. This also prevents objects from being deleted in cases where deletion would be blocked by an on_delete=PROTECT constraint. This feature was developed by Sage Abdullah.

SVG image support

The image library can now be configured to allow uploading SVG images. These are handled by the {% image %} template tag as normal, with some limitations on image operations - for full details, see SVG images. This feature was developed by Joshua Munn, and sponsored by YouGov.

Custom validation support for StreamField

Support for adding custom validation logic to StreamField blocks has been formalized and simplified. For most purposes, raising a ValidationError from the block’s clean method is now sufficient; more complex behaviors (such as attaching errors to a specific child block) are possible through block-specific subclasses of ValidationError. For more details, see StreamField validation. This feature was developed by Matt Westcott.

Customizable SVG icons

Wagtail’s icon set is now fully updated, customizable, and extendable. Built-in icons are now based on the latest FontAwesome visuals, with capabilities to both customize existing icons as well as add new ones. In particular, this includes:

  • A new {% icon %} icon template tag to reuse icons in custom templates.

  • A register_icons hook to register new icons and override existing ones.

  • Live documentation of all available icons in the styleguide, showcasing the icons available on the current site.

  • A list of all built-in icons within our developer documentation.

  • Support for customizing icons for snippets via SnippetViewSet.icon.

  • Support for custom panel icons, with defaults, displayed for top-level editor panels.

  • New icons for StreamField blocks

For more details, see our new icons documentation.

This has been made possible thanks to a multi-year refactoring effort to migrate all icons to SVG. Thank you to all contributors who participated in this effort: Coen van der Kamp, LB (Ben) Johnston, Dan Braghis, Daniel Kirkham, Sage Abdullah, Thibaud Colas, Scott Cranfill, Storm Heg, Steve Steinwand, Jérôme Lebleu, Abayomi Victory.

Accessibility checker improvements

The built-in accessibility checker has been updated with:

  • 5 more Axe rules enabled by default.

  • Sorting of checker results according to their position on the page.

  • Highlight styles to more easily identify elements with errors.

  • Configuration APIs in AccessibilityItem for simpler customization of the checks performed.

Those improvements were implemented by Albina Starykova as part of an Outreachy internship, with support from mentors Thibaud Colas, Sage Abdullah, and Joshua Munn.

Always-on minimap

Following its introduction in Wagtail 4.1, we have made several improvements to the page editor minimap:

  • It now stays opened until dismissed, so users can keep it expanded if desired.

  • Its “expanded” state is preserved when navigating between different views of the CMS.

  • The minimap and “Collapse all” button now appear next to side panels rather than underneath, so they can be used at any time.

  • Clicking any item reveals the minimap, with appropriate text for screen reader users.

  • Navigating to a collapsed section of the page will reveal this section.

Thank you to everyone who provided feedback on this new addition to the editor experience. Those changes were implemented by Thibaud Colas.

Dark mode

Wagtail’s admin interface now supports dark mode. The new dark theme can be enabled in account preferences, as well as configuring permanent usage of the light theme, or following system preferences.

We hope this new theme will bring accessibility improvements for users who prefer light text on dark backgrounds, and energy usage efficiency improvements for users of OLED monitors. This feature was developed by Thibaud Colas, with designs from Ben Enright.

Snippets parity with ModelAdmin

Continuing on recent improvements to snippets, we have made the following additions to how snippets can be customized in the admin interface:

  • Allow customizing the base URL and URL namespace for snippet views.

  • Allow customizing the default ordering and number of items per page for snippet listing views.

  • Allow admin templates for snippets to be overridden on a per-model or per-app basis.

  • Allow overriding the base queryset to be used in snippet IndexView.

  • Allow customizing the search_fields and search backend via SnippetViewSet.

  • Allow filters on snippet index views to be customized through the list_filter attribute.

  • Allow panels / edit_handler to be specified via SnippetViewSet.

  • Support for customizing icons for snippets via SnippetViewSet.icon.

  • Allow snippets to be registered into arbitrary admin menu items.

For more details, see Customizing admin views for snippets.

Developed by Sage Abdullah, these features were implemented as part of RFC 85: Snippets parity with ModelAdmin. We will start the deprecation process of the ModelAdmin contrib package in the next feature release and publish it as a separate package for users who wish to continue using it. The ModelAdmin package will be removed in Wagtail 6.0.

Other features

  • Add WAGTAILIMAGES_EXTENSIONS setting to restrict image uploads to specific file types (Aman Pandey, Ananjan-R)

  • Update user list column level to Access level to be easier to understand (Vallabh Tiwari)

  • Migrate .button-longrunning behavior to a Stimulus controller with support for custom label element & duration (Loveth Omokaro)

  • Implement new simplified userbar designs (Albina Starykova)

  • Add usage view for pages (Sage Abdullah)

  • Copy page form now updates the slug field dynamically with a slugified value on blur (Loveth Omokaro)

  • Ensure selected collection is kept when navigating from documents or images listings to add multiple views & upon upload (Aman Pandey, Bojan Mihelac)

  • Keep applied filters when downloading form submissions (Suyash Srivastava)

  • Messages added dynamically via JavaScript now have an icon to be consistent with those supplied in the page’s HTML (Aman Pandey)

  • Switch lock/unlock side panel toggle to a switch, with more appropriate confirmation message status (Sage Abdullah)

  • Ensure that changed or cleared selection from choosers will dispatch a DOM change event (George Sakkis)

  • Add the ability to disable model indexing by setting search_fields = [] (Daniel Kirkham)

  • Enhance wagtail.search.utils.parse_query_string to allow inner single quotes for key/value parsing (Aman Pandey)

  • Add helpful properties to Locale for more convenient usage within templates, see Basic example (Andy Babic)

  • Re-label “StreamField blocks” option in block picker to “Blocks” (Thibaud Colas)

  • Switch styleguide navigation to use panel components and minimap (Thibaud Colas)

  • Explicitly specify MenuItem.name for Snippets, Reports, and Settings menu items (Sage Abdullah)

  • Move the help text of fields and blocks directly below their label for easier reading (Thibaud Colas)

  • The select all checkbox in simple translation’s submit translation page will now be in sync with other checkbox changes (Hanoon)

  • Revise alignment and spacing of form fields and sections (Thibaud Colas)

  • Update Wagtail’s type scale so StreamField block labels and field labels are the same size (Thibaud Colas)

  • Style comments as per page editor design, in side panel (Karl Hobley, Thibaud Colas)

  • ReferenceIndex modified to only index Wagtail-related models, and allow other models to be explicitly registered (Daniel Kirkham)

Bug fixes

  • Ensure label_format on StructBlock gracefully handles missing variables (Aadi jindal)

  • Adopt a no-JavaScript and more accessible solution for the ‘Reset to default’ switch to Gravatar when editing user profile (Loveth Omokaro)

  • Ensure Site.get_site_root_paths works on cache backends that do not preserve Python objects (Jaap Roes)

  • Ignore right clicks on side panel resizer (Sage Abdullah)

  • Resize in the correct direction for RTL languages with the side panel resizer (Sage Abdullah)

  • Fix image uploads on storage backends that require file pointer to be at the start of the file (Matt Westcott)

  • Fix “Edit this page” missing from userbar (Satvik Vashisht)

  • No longer allow invalid duplicate site hostname creation as hostnames and domain names are a case insensitive (Coen van der Kamp)

  • Image and Document multiple upload update forms now correctly use the progress button (longrunning) behavior when clicked (Loveth Omokaro)

  • Prevent audit log report from failing on missing models (Andy Chosak)

  • Ensure that the privacy collection privacy edit button is styled as a button (Jatin Kumar)

  • Fix page/snippet cannot proceed a GroupApprovalTask if it’s locked by someone outside of the group (Sage Abdullah)

  • Allow manual lock even if WorkflowLock is currently applied (Sage Abdullah)

  • Add missing log information for wagtail.schedule.cancel (Stefan Hammer)

  • Fix timezone activation leaking into subsequent requests in require_admin_access() (Stefan Hammer)

  • Fix dialog component’s message to have rounded corners at the top side (Sam)

  • When multiple documents are uploaded and then subsequently updated, ensure that existing success messages are cleared correctly (Aman Pandey)

  • Prevent matches from unrelated models from leaking into SQLite FTS searches (Matt Westcott)

  • Prevent duplicate addition of StreamField blocks with the new block picker (Deepam Priyadarshi)

  • Enable partial search on images and documents index view where available (Mng)

  • Adopt a no-JavaScript and more accessible solution for option selection in reporting, using HTML only radio input fields (Mehul Aggarwal)

  • Ensure that document search results count shows the correct all matches, not the paginate total (Andy Chosak)

  • Fix radio and checkbox elements shrinking when using a long label (Sage Abdullah)

  • Fix select elements expanding beyond their container when using a long option label (Sage Abdullah)

  • Fix timezone handling of TemplateResponses for users with a custom timezone (Stefan Hammer, Sage Abdullah)

  • Ensure TableBlock initialization correctly runs after load and its width is aligned with the parent panel (Dan Braghis)

  • Ensure that the JavaScript media files are loaded by default in Snippet index listings for date fields (Sage Abdullah)

  • Fix server-side caching of the icons sprite (Thibaud Colas)

  • Avoid showing scrollbars in the block picker unless necessary (Babitha Kumari)

  • Always show Add buttons, guide lines, Move up/down, Duplicate, Delete; in StreamField and Inline Panel (Thibaud Colas)

  • Make admin JS i18n endpoint accessible to non-authenticated users (Matt Westcott)

  • Autosize text area field will now correctly resize when switching between comments toggle states (Suyash Srivastava)

  • Fix incorrect API serialization for document download_url when WAGTAILDOCS_SERVE_METHOD is direct (Swojak-A)

  • Fix template configuration of snippets index results view (fidoriel, Sage Abdullah)

  • Prevent long preview mode names from making the select element overflow the side panel (Sage Abdullah)

  • When i18n is not enabled, avoid making a Locale query on every page view (Dan Braghis)

  • Fix initialization of commenting widgets within StreamField (Thibaud Colas)

  • Fix various regressions in the commenting UI (Thibaud Colas)

  • Prevent TableBlock from becoming uneditable after save (Sage Abdullah)

  • Correctly show the “new item” badge within menu sections previously dismissed (Sage Abdullah)

  • Fix side panel stuck in resize state when pointer is released outside the grip (Sage Abdullah)

Documentation

  • Add code block to make it easier to understand contribution docs (Suyash Singh)

  • Fix broken formatting for MultiFieldPanel / FieldRowPanel permission kwarg docs (Matt Westcott)

  • Add helpful troubleshooting links and refine wording for getting started with development (Loveth Omokaro)

  • Ensure search autocomplete overlay on mobile does not overflow the viewport (Ayman Makroo)

  • Improve documentation for InlinePanel (Vallabh Tiwari)

  • Remove confusing SettingsPanel reference in the page editing TabbedInterface example as SettingsPanel no longer shows anything as of 4.1 (Kenny Wolf, Julian Bigler)

  • Add contributor guidelines for building Stimulus Controllers (Thibaud Colas, Loveth Omokaro, LB (Ben) Johnston)

  • Fix typo in “Extending Draftail” documentation (Hans Kelson)

  • Clarify ClusterableModel requirements for using relations with RevisionMixin-enabled models (Sage Abdullah)

  • Add guide to making your first contribution (LB (Ben) Johnston)

Maintenance

  • Removed features deprecated in Wagtail 3.0 and 4.0 (Matt Westcott)

  • Update djhtml (html formatting) library to v 1.5.2 (Loveth Omokaro)

  • Re-enable strictPropertyInitialization in tsconfig (Thibaud Colas)

  • Refactor accessibility checker userbar item (Albina Starykova)

  • Removed unused Page.get_static_site_paths method (Yosr Karoui)

  • Provisional Django 5.0 compatibility fixes (Sage Abdullah)

  • Add unit tests for CollapseAll and MinimapItem components (Albina Starykova)

  • Code quality fixes (GLEF1X)

  • Refactor image / document / snippet usage views into a shared generic view (Sage Abdullah)

  • Rename the Stimulus AutoFieldController to the less confusing SubmitController (Loveth Omokaro)

  • Replace script tags with template tag for image/document bulk uploads (Rishabh Kumar Bahukhandi)

  • Remove unneeded float styles on 404 page (Fabien Le Frapper)

  • Convert userbar implementation to TypeScript (Albina Starykova)

  • Migrate slug field behavior to a Stimulus controller and create new SlugInput widget (Loveth Omokaro)

  • Refactor status HTML usage to shared template tag (Aman Pandey, LB (Ben) Johnston, Himanshu Garg)

  • Add curlylint and update djhtml, semgrep versions in pre-commit config (Himanshu Garg)

  • Use shared header template for ModelAdmin and Snippets type index header (Aman Pandey)

  • Move models and forms for wagtailsearch.Query to wagtail.contrib.search_promotions (Karl Hobley)

  • Migrate initErrorDetection (tabs error counts) to a Stimulus Controller w-count (Aman Pandey)

  • Migrate window.addMessage behavior to a global event listener & Stimulus Controller approach with w-messages (Aman Pandey)

  • Update Algolia DocSearch to use new application and correct versioning setup (Thibaud Colas)

  • Move snippet choosers and model check registration to SnippetViewSet.on_register() (Sage Abdullah)

  • Remove unused snippets delete-multiple view (Sage Abdullah)

  • Improve performance of determining live page URLs across the admin interface using pageurl template tag (Satvik Vashisht)

  • Migrate window.initSlugAutoPopulate behavior to a Stimulus Controller w-sync (Loveth Omokaro)

  • Rename status classes to w-status to align with preferred CSS class naming conventions (Mansi Gundre)

  • Include wagtail-factories in wagtail.test.utils to avoid cross-dependency issues (Matt Westcott)

  • Fix search tests to correctly reflect behavior of search backends other than the fallback backend (Matt Westcott)

  • Migrate select all checkbox in simple translation’s submit translation page to Stimulus controller w-bulk, remove inline script usage (Hanoon)

  • Refactor SnippetViewSet to extend ModelViewSet (Sage Abdullah)

  • Migrate initDismissibles behavior to a Stimulus controller w-disimissible (Loveth Omokaro)

  • Replace jQuery autosize v3 with Stimulus w-autosize controller using autosize npm package v6 (Suyash Srivastava)

  • Update w-action controller to support a click method (Suyash Srivastava)

  • Migrate the site settings switcher select from jQuery to a refined version of the w-action controller usage (Aadi jindal, LB (Ben) Johnston)

  • Always use expanded Sass output so CSS processing is identical in development and production builds (Thibaud Colas)

  • Refactor admin color palette to semantic, theme-agnostic design tokens (Thibaud Colas)

Upgrade considerations

Removal of deprecated features

The following features deprecated in Wagtail 3.0 have been fully removed. See Wagtail 3.0 release notes for details on these changes, including how to remove usage of these features:

  • The modules wagtail.core, wagtail.tests, wagtail.admin.edit_handlers and wagtail.contrib.forms.edit_handlers are removed.

  • The field panel classes StreamFieldPanel, RichTextFieldPanel, ImageChooserPanel, DocumentChooserPanel and SnippetChooserPanel are removed.

  • StreamField definitions must include use_json_field=True (except migrations created before Wagtail 5.0).

  • The BASE_URL setting is no longer recognized.

  • The ModelAdmin.get_form_fields_exclude method is no longer passed a request argument.

  • The ModelAdmin.get_edit_handler method is no longer passed a request or instance argument.

  • The widget_overrides, required_fields, required_formsets, bind_to, render_as_object and render_as_field methods on Panel (previously EditHandler) are removed.

The following features deprecated in Wagtail 4.0 have been fully removed. See Wagtail 4.0 release notes for details on these changes, including how to remove usage of these features:

  • The wagtail.contrib.settings.models.BaseSetting class is removed.

  • The Page.get_latest_revision_as_page method is removed.

  • The page and page_id properties and as_page_object method on Revision are removed.

  • The JavaScript functions createPageChooser, createSnippetChooser, createDocumentChooser and createImageChooser are removed.

  • The wagtail.contrib.modeladmin.menus.SubMenu class is removed.

  • Subclasses of wagtail.contrib.modeladmin.helpers.AdminURLHelper are now required to accept a base_url_path keyword argument on the constructor.

  • The wagtail.admin.widgets.chooser.AdminChooser class is removed.

  • The wagtail.snippets.views.snippets.get_snippet_edit_handler function is removed.

Dropped support for Django 4.0

Django 4.0 reached end of life on 1st April 2023 and is no longer supported by Wagtail. Django 3.2 (LTS) is still supported until April 2024.

ReferenceIndex no longer tracks models used outside of Wagtail

When introduced in Wagtail 4.1, the ReferenceIndex model recorded references across all of a project’s models by default. The default set of models being indexed has now been changed to only those used within the Wagtail admin, specifically:

  • all Page types

  • Images

  • Documents

  • models registered as Snippets

  • models registered with ModelAdmin

This change will remove the impact of the indexing on non-Wagtail apps and models.

If you have models that still require reference indexing, and which are not registered as snippets or with ModelAdmin, you will need to explicitly register them within your app’s AppConfig.ready() method. See Reference Index for further details.

The use of wagtail_reference_index_ignore to prevent indexing of models is unchanged, but in many cases it may no longer be necessary.

It is recommended that the rebuild_references_index management command is run after the upgrade to remove any unnecessary records.

Page.get_static_site_paths method removed

The undocumented Page.get_static_site_paths method (which returns a generator of URL paths for use by static site generator packages) has been removed. Packages relying on this functionality should provide their own fallback implementation.

wagtailsearch.Query has moved to wagtail.contrib.search_promotions

The wagtailsearch.Query model has been moved from the search application to the contrib application wagtail.contrib.search_promotions. All imports will need to be updated and migrations will need to be run via a management command, some imports will still work with a warning until a future version.

To continue using the Query model, you must also add the wagtail.contrib.search_promotions application to your project’s INSTALLED_APPS setting.

Migration command

If you have daily hits records in the wagtailsearch.Query you can run the management command to move these records to the new location.

./manage.py copy_daily_hits_from_wagtailsearch

Managing stored search queries

The search_garbage_collect command used to remove old stored search queries and daily hits has been moved to searchpromotions_garbage_collect.

Import updates

Import

Old import

New import

Query Model

from wagtail.search.models import Query

from wagtail.contrib.search_promotions.models import Query

QueryForm

from wagtail.search.forms import QueryForm

from wagtail.contrib.search_promotions.forms import QueryForm

Changes to header CSS classes in ModelAdmin templates

If there are custom styles in place for the ModelAdmin’s header content or more complex template overrides in use, there are a few changes for the following classes to be aware of.

Content

Old classes

New classes

Heading & search (contains h1)

.left.header-left

.left

Action buttons (header_extra)

.right.header-right

.right

Slug field auto-cleaning now relies on data attributes

The slug field JavaScript behavior was previously attached to any field with an ID of id_slug, this has now changed to be any field with the appropriate Stimulus data attributes.

If using a custom edit handler or set of panels for page models, the correct widget will now need to be used for these data attributes to be included. This widget will use the WAGTAIL_ALLOW_UNICODE_SLUGS Django setting.

from wagtail.admin.widgets.slug import SlugInput
# ... other imports

class MyPage(Page):
    promote_panels = [
        FieldPanel("slug", widget=SlugInput),
        # ... other panels
    ]

Additionally, the slug behavior can be attached to any field easily by including the following attributes in HTML or via Django’s widget attrs.

<input
    type="text"
    name="slug"
    data-controller="w-slug"
    data-action="blur->w-slug#slugify"
/>

To allow unicode values, add the data attribute value;

<input
    type="text"
    name="slug"
    data-controller="w-slug"
    data-action="blur->w-slug#slugify"
    data-w-slug-allow-unicode-value="true"
/>

Changes to title / slug field synchronization

The mechanism for synchronizing the slug field with the page title has changed, and is no longer hard-coded to activate on fields named ‘title’. Notably, this change affects page panel definitions that use FieldPanel("title") directly (rather than the convention of extending Page.content_panels), as well as non-page models such as snippets.

To assist in upgrading these definitions, Wagtail 5.0.2 provides a new TitleFieldPanel class to be used in place of FieldPanel("title"). For example:

from wagtail.admin.panels import FieldPanel, MultiFieldPanel

    # ...
    content_panels = [
        MultiFieldPanel([
            FieldPanel("title"),
            FieldPanel("subtitle"),
        ]),
    ]

should become:

from wagtail.admin.panels import FieldPanel, MultiFieldPanel, TitleFieldPanel

    # ...
    content_panels = [
        MultiFieldPanel([
            TitleFieldPanel("title"),
            FieldPanel("subtitle"),
        ]),
    ]

If you have made deeper customizations to this behavior, or are unable to upgrade to Wagtail 5.0.2 or above, please read on as you may need to make some changes to adopt the new approach.

The title field will sync its value with the slug field on Pages if the Page is not published and the slug has not been manually changed. This JavaScript behavior previously attached to any field with an ID of id_title; this has now changed to be any field with the appropriate Stimulus data attributes.

There is a new Stimulus controller w-sync which allows any field to change one or more other fields when its value changes, the other field in this case will be the slug field (w-slug) with the id id_slug.

If you need to hook into this behavior, the new approach will now correctly dispatch change events on the slug field. Alternatively, you can modify the data attributes on the fields to adjust this behavior.

To adjust the target field (the one to be updated), you cam modify "data-w-sync-target-value", the default being "body:not(.page-is-live) [data-edit-form] #id_slug" (find the field with id id_slug when the page is not live).

To adjust what triggers the initial check (to see if the fields should be in sync), or the trigger the sync, you can use the Stimulus data-action attributes.

<input
    id="id_title"
    type="text"
    name="title"
    data-controller="w-sync"
    data-action="focus->w-sync#check blur->w-sync#apply change->w-sync#apply"
    data-w-sync-target-value="body:not(.page-is-live) #some_other_slug"
/>

Above we have adjusted these attributes to add a ‘change’ event listener to trigger the sync and also adjusted to look for a field with some_other_slug instead.

Auto height/size text area widget now relies on data attributes

If you are using the wagtail.admin.widgets.AdminAutoHeightTextInput only, this change will have no impact when upgrading. However, if you are relying on the global autosize function at window.autosize on the client, this will no longer work.

It is recommended that the AdminAutoHeightTextInput widget be used instead. You can also adopt the data-controller attribute and this will now function as before. Alternatively, you can simply add the required Stimulus data controller attribute as shown below.

Old syntax

<textarea id="story" name="story">It was a dark and stormy night...</textarea>
<script>window.autosize($('story'));</script>

New syntax

<textarea name="story" data-controller="w-autosize">It was a dark and stormy night...</textarea>

There are no additional data attributes supported at this time.

Progress button (button-longrunning) now relies on data attributes

The button-longrunning class usage has been updated to use the newly adopted Stimulus approach, the previous data attributes will be deprecated in a future release.

If using the old approach, ensure any HTML templates are updated to the new approach before the next major release.

Old syntax

<button type="submit" class="button action-save button-longrunning" data-clicked-text="{% trans 'Creating…' %}">
  {% icon name="spinner" %}
  <em>{% trans 'Create' %}</em>
</button>

New syntax

Minimum required attributes are data-controller and a data-action.

<button type="submit" class="button action-save button-longrunning" data-controller="w-progress" data-action="w-progress#activate" data-w-progress-active-value="{% trans 'Creating…' %}">
  {% icon name="spinner" %}
  <em data-w-progress-target="label">{% trans 'Create' %}</em>
</button>

Examples of additional capabilities

Stimulus targets and actions can be leveraged to revise the behavior via data attributes.

  • <button ... data-w-progress-duration-value="500" ...> - custom duration can be declared on the element

  • <button ... class="custom-button" data-w-progress-active-class="custom-button--busy" ...> - custom ‘active’ class to replace the default button-longrunning-active (must be a single string without spaces)

  • <button ... ><strong data-w-progress-target="label">{% trans 'Create' %}</strong></button> - any element can be the button label (not just em)

  • <button ... data-action="w-progress#activate focus->w-progress#activate" ...> - any event can be used to trigger the in progress behavior

  • <button ... data-action="w-progress#activate:once" ...> - only trigger the progress behaviour once

  • <button ... data-action="readystatechange@document->w-progress#activate:once" data-w-progress-duration-value="5000" disabled ...> - disabled on load (once JS starts) and becomes enabled after 5s duration

JavaScript window.addMessages replaced with event dispatching

The undocumented window.addMessage function is no longer available and will throw an error if called, if similar functionality is required use DOM Event dispatching instead as follows.

// old
window.addMessage('success', 'Content has updated');
// new
document.dispatchEvent(
    new CustomEvent('w-messages:add', {
        detail: { text: 'Content has updated', type: 'success' },
    }),
);
// new (clearing existing messages before adding a new one)
document.dispatchEvent(
    new CustomEvent('w-messages:add', {
        detail: {
            clear: true,
            text: 'All content has updated',
            type: 'success',
        },
    }),
);
// message types 'success', 'error', 'warning' are supported

Note that this event name may change in the future and this functionality is still not officially supported.

Changes to StreamField ValidationError classes

The client-side handling of StreamField validation errors has been updated. The JavaScript classes StreamBlockValidationError, ListBlockValidationError, StructBlockValidationError and TypedTableBlockValidationError have been removed, and the corresponding Python classes can no longer be serialized using Telepath. Instead, the setError methods on client-side block objects now accept a plain JSON representation of the error, obtained from the as_json_data method on the Python class. Custom JavaScript code that works with these objects must be updated accordingly.

Additionally, the Python StreamBlockValidationError, ListBlockValidationError, StructBlockValidationError and TypedTableBlockValidationError classes no longer provide a params dict with block_errors and non_block_errors items; these are now available as the attributes block_errors and non_block_errors on the exception itself (or cell_errors and non_block_errors in the case of TypedTableBlockValidationError).

Snippets delete-multiple view removed

The ability to remove multiple snippet instances from the DeleteView and the undocumented wagtailsnippets_{app_label}_{model_name}:delete-multiple URL pattern have been removed. The view’s functionality has been replaced by the delete action of the bulk actions feature introduced in Wagtail 4.0.

The delete bulk action view now also calls the {before,after}_delete_snippet hooks, in addition to the {before,after}_bulk_action hooks.

If you have customized the IndexView and/or DeleteView views in a SnippetViewSet subclass, make sure that the delete_multiple_url_name attribute is renamed to delete_url_name.

Snippets index views template name changed

The template name for the index view of a snippet model has changed from wagtailsnippets/snippets/type_index.html and wagtailsnippets/snippets/results.html to wagtailsnippets/snippets/index.html and wagtailsnippets/snippets/index_results.html. In addition, the model index view that lists the snippet types now looks for the template wagtailsnippets/snippets/model_index.html before resorting to the generic index template. If you have customized these templates, make sure to update them accordingly.

status classes are now w-status

Please update any custom styling or usage within the admin when working with status tags to the following new classes.

Old

New

status-tag

w-status

primary

w-status--primary

disabled

w-status--disabled

status-tag--label

w-status--label

Note that a new template tag has been built for usage within the admin that may make it easier to generate status tags.

{% load wagtailadmin_tags %}
{% status "live" url="/test-url/" title=trans_title hidden_label=trans_hidden_label classname="w-status--primary" attrs='target="_blank" rel="noreferrer"' %}
{% status status_label classname="w-status--primary" %}

Deprecated icon font

The Wagtail icon font has been deprecated and will be removed in a future release, as it is now unused in Wagtail itself. There are no changes to make for any icons usage via dedicated APIs such as icon class properties. Any direct icon font usage needs to be converted to SVG icons instead, as documented in our icons overview.

To check whether your project uses the icon font, check for occurrences of:

  • Loading of the wagtail.woff font file.

  • Usage of font-family: wagtail in CSS.

  • icon-<name> CSS classes outside of SVG elements.

Deprecated icons

The following icons are unused in Wagtail itself and will be removed in a future release. If you are using any of these icons, please replace them with an alternative (see our full list of icons), or re-add the icon to your own project.

Icon name

Alternative

angle-double-left

arrow-left

angle-double-right

arrow-right

arrow-down-big

arrow-down

arrow-up-big

arrow-up

arrows-up-down

order

chain-broken

link

chevron-down

arrow-down (identical)

dots-vertical

dots-horizontal

download-alt

download (identical)

duplicate

copy (identical)

ellipsis-v

dots-horizontal

horizontalrule

minus

repeat

rotate

reset

rotate

tick

check (identical)

undo

rotate

uni52

folder-inverse (identical)

wagtail-inverse

wagtail-icon

Snippets get_admin_url_namespace() and get_admin_base_path() moved to SnippetViewSet

The undocumented get_admin_url_namespace() and get_admin_base_path() methods that were set on snippet models at runtime have been moved to the SnippetViewSet class. If you use these methods, you could access them via SnippetModel.snippet_viewset.get_admin_url_namespace() and SnippetModel.snippet_viewset.get_admin_base_path(), respectively.

Snippets get_usage() and usage_url() methods removed

The undocumented get_usage() and usage_url() methods that were set on snippet models at runtime have been removed. Calls to the get_usage() method can be replaced with wagtail.models.ReferenceIndex.get_grouped_references_to(object). The usage_url() method does not have a direct replacement, but the URL name can be retrieved via SnippetModel.snippet_viewset.get_url_name("usage"), which can be used to construct the URL with reverse().