Configuring your models to use these components will shape the Wagtail editor to your needs. Wagtail also provides an API for injecting custom CSS and JavaScript for further customisation, including extending the ``hallo.js`` rich text editor.
A "panel" is the basic editing block in Wagtail. Wagtail will automatically pick the appropriate editing widget for most Django field types; implementers just need to add a panel for each field they want to show in the Wagtail page editor, in the order they want them to appear.
*``promote_panels`` is suggested for organising fields regarding the promotion of the page around the site and the Internet. For example, a field to dictate whether the page should show in site-wide menus, descriptive text that should appear in site search results, SEO-friendly titles, OpenGraph meta tag content and other machine-readable information.
*``settings_panels`` is essentially for non-copy fields. By default it contains the page's scheduled publishing fields. Other suggested fields could include a field to switch between one layout/style and another.
After the :class:`~wagtail.wagtailcore.models.Page`-derived class definition, just add lists of panel definitions to order and organise the Wagtail page editing interface for your model.
This is the panel used for basic Django field types.
..attribute:: FieldPanel.field_name
This is the name of the class property used in your model definition.
..attribute:: FieldPanel.classname
This is a string of optional CSS classes given to the panel which are used in formatting and scripted interactivity. By default, panels are formatted as inset fields.
The CSS class ``full`` can be used to format the panel so it covers the full width of the Wagtail page editor.
The CSS class ``title`` can be used to mark a field as the source for auto-generated slug strings.
..attribute:: FieldPanel.widget (optional)
This parameter allows you to specify a `django form widget`_ to use instead of the default widget for this field type.
This panel condenses several :class:`~wagtail.wagtailadmin.edit_handlers.FieldPanel`` s or choosers, from a ``list`` or ``tuple``, under a single ``heading`` string.
By default, ``MultiFieldPanel`` s are expanded and not collapsible. Adding ``collapsible`` to ``classname`` will enable the collapse control. Adding both ``collapsible`` and ``collapsed`` to the ``classname`` parameter will load the editor page with the ``MultiFieldPanel`` collapsed under its heading.
This panel allows for the creation of a "cluster" of related objects over a join to a separate model, such as a list of related links or slides to an image carousel.
This is a poweful but complex feature which will take some space to cover, so we'll skip over it for now. For a full explanation on the usage of ``InlinePanel``, see :ref:`inline_panels`.
This panel creates a columnar layout in the editing interface, where each of the child Panels appears alongside each other rather than below.
Use of FieldRowPanel particularly helps reduce the "snow-blindness" effect of seeing so many fields on the page, for complex models. It also improves the perceived association between fields of a similar nature. For example if you created a model representing an "Event" which had a starting date and ending date, it may be intuitive to find the start and end date on the same "row".
FieldRowPanel should be used in combination with ``col*`` class names added to each of the child Panels of the FieldRowPanel. The Wagtail editing interface is laid out using a grid system, in which the maximum width of the editor is 12 columns. Classes ``col1``-``col12`` can be applied to each child of a FieldRowPanel. The class ``col3`` will ensure that field appears 3 columns wide or a quarter the width. ``col4`` would cause the field to be 4 columns wide, or a third the width.
You can explicitly link :class:`~wagtail.wagtailcore.models.Page`-derived models together using the :class:`~wagtail.wagtailcore.models.Page` model and ``PageChooserPanel``.
``PageChooserPanel`` takes two arguments: a field name and an optional page type. Specifying a page type (in the form of an ``"appname.modelname"`` string) will filter the chooser to display only pages of that type.
Wagtail includes a unified image library, which you can access in your models through the :class:`~wagtail.wagtailimages.models.Image` model and the ``ImageChooserPanel`` chooser. Here's how:
Django's default behaviour is to "cascade" deletions through a ForeignKey relationship, which may not be what you want. This is why the ``null``, ``blank``, and ``on_delete`` parameters should be set to allow for an empty field. (See `Django model field reference (on_delete)`_ ). ``ImageChooserPanel`` takes only one argument: the name of the field.
As with images, Wagtail documents should also have the appropriate extra parameters to prevent cascade deletions across a ForeignKey relationship. ``DocumentChooserPanel`` takes only one argument: the name of the field.
Snippets are vanilla Django models you create yourself without a Wagtail-provided base class. So using them as a field in a page requires specifying your own ``appname.modelname``. A chooser, ``SnippetChooserPanel``, is provided which takes the field name and snippet class.
Django's field types are automatically recognised and provided with an appropriate widget for input. Just define that field the normal Django way and pass the field name into :class:`~wagtail.wagtailadmin.edit_handlers.FieldPanel` when defining your panels. Wagtail will take care of the rest.
By adding CSS classes to your panel definitions or adding extra parameters to your field definitions, you can control much of how your fields will display in the Wagtail page editing interface. Wagtail's page editing interface takes much of its behaviour from Django's admin, so you may find many options for customisation covered there. (See `Django model field reference`_ ).
Use ``classname="full"`` to make a field (input element) stretch the full width of the Wagtail page editor. This will not work if the field is encapsulated in a :class:`~wagtail.wagtailadmin.edit_handlers.MultiFieldPanel`, which places its child fields into a formset.
Without a panel definition, a default form field (without label) will be used to represent your fields. If you intend to hide a field on the Wagtail page editor, define the field with ``editable=False`` (See `Django model field reference (editable)`_ ).
.._Django model field reference (editable): https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/models/fields/#editable
The ``django-modelcluster`` module allows for streamlined relation of extra models to a Wagtail page. For instance, you can create objects related through a ``ForeignKey`` relationship on the fly and save them to a draft revision of a ``Page`` object. Normally, your related objects "cluster" would need to be created beforehand (or asynchronously) before linking them to a Page.
Let's look at the example of adding related links to a :class:`~wagtail.wagtailcore.models.Page`-derived model. We want to be able to add as many as we like, assign an order, and do all of this without leaving the page editing screen.
The ``RelatedLink`` class is a vanilla Django abstract model. The ``BookPageRelatedLinks`` model extends it with capability for being ordered in the Wagtail interface via the ``Orderable`` class as well as adding a ``page`` property which links the model to the ``BookPage`` model we're adding the related links objects to. Finally, in the panel definitions for ``BookPage``, we'll add an :class:`~wagtail.wagtailadmin.edit_handlers.InlinePanel` to provide an interface for it all. Let's look again at the parameters that :class:`~wagtail.wagtailadmin.edit_handlers.InlinePanel` accepts:
The ``relation_name`` is the ``related_name`` label given to the cluster's ``ParentalKey`` relation. You can add the ``panels`` manually or make them part of the cluster model. Finally, ``label`` and ``help_text`` provide a heading and caption, respectively, for the Wagtail editor.
In previous versions, it was necessary to pass the base model as the first parameter to :class:`~wagtail.wagtailadmin.edit_handlers.InlinePanel`; this is no longer required.
