wagtail/docs/releases/6.2.md

Wagtail 6.2 release notes

August 1, 2024

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What's new

Content metrics

The page editor’s Checks panel now displays two content metrics: word count, and reading time. They are calculated based on the contents of the page preview, with a new mechanism to extract content from the previewed page for processing within the page editor. The Checks panel has also been redesigned to accommodate a wider breadth of types of checks, and interactive checks, in future releases.

This feature was developed by Albina Starykova and sponsored by The Motley Fool.

Concurrent editing notifications

When multiple users concurrently work on the same content, Wagtail now displays notifications to inform them of potential editing conflicts. When a user saves their work, other users are informed and presented with options: they can refresh the page to view the latest changes, or proceed with their own changes, overwriting the other user's work.

Concurrent editing notifications are available for pages, and snippets. Specific messaging about conflicting versions is only available for pages and snippets with support for saving revisions. To configure how often notifications are updated, use WAGTAIL_EDITING_SESSION_PING_INTERVAL.

This feature was implemented by Matt Westcott and Sage Abdullah.

Alt text accessibility check

The built-in accessibility checker now enforces a new alt-text-quality rule, which tests alt text for the presence of known bad patterns such as file extensions and underscores. This rule is enabled by default, but can be disabled if necessary.

This feature was implemented by Albina Starykova, with support from the Wagtail accessibility team.

Universal listings designs for report views

All built-in and custom report views now use the Universal Listings visual design and filtering features introduced in all other listings in the admin interface over past releases. Thank you to Sage Abdullah for implementing this feature and continuing the rollout of the new designs.

Compact StreamField representation for migrations

StreamField definitions within migrations are now represented in a more compact form, where blocks that appear in multiple places within a StreamField structure are only defined once. For complex and deeply-nested StreamFields, this considerably reduces the size of migration files, and the memory consumption when loading them. This feature was developed by Matt Westcott.

Other features

• Optimize and consolidate redirects report view into the index view (Jake Howard, Dan Braghis)
• Support a HOSTNAMES parameter on WAGTAILFRONTENDCACHE to define which hostnames a backend should respond to (Jake Howard, sponsored by Oxfam America)
• Refactor redirects edit view to use the generic EditView and breadcrumbs (Rohit Sharma)
• Allow custom permission policies on snippets to prevent superusers from creating or editing them (Sage Abdullah)
• Do not link to edit view from listing views if user has no permission to edit (Sage Abdullah)
• Allow access to snippets and other model viewsets to users with "View" permission (Sage Abdullah)
• Skip ChooseParentView if only one possible valid parent page is available (Matthias Brück)
• Add copy_for_translation_done signal when a page is copied for translation (Arnar Tumi Þorsteinsson)
• Remove reduced opacity for draft page title in listings (Inju Michorius)
• Implement a new design for locale labels in listings (Albina Starykova)
• Add a deactivate() method to ProgressController (Alex Morega)
• Allow manually specifying credentials for CloudFront frontend cache backend (Jake Howard)
• Automatically register permissions for models registered with a ModelViewSet (Sage Abdullah)
• Make routable_resolver_match attribute available on RoutablePageMixin responses (Andy Chosak)
• Support customizations to UserViewSet via the app config (Sage Abdullah)
• Allow changing available privacy options per page model (Shlomo Markowitz)
• Add "soft" client-side validation for StreamBlock / ListBlock min_num / max_num (Matt Westcott)
• Log accessibility checker results in the console to help developers with troubleshooting (Thibaud Colas)
• Disable pointer events on checker highlights to simplify DevTools inspections (Thibaud Colas)

Bug fixes

• Make WAGTAILIMAGES_CHOOSER_PAGE_SIZE setting functional again (Rohit Sharma)
• Enable richtext template tag to convert lazy translation values (Benjamin Bach)
• Ensure permission labels on group permissions page are translated where available (Matt Westcott)
• Preserve whitespace in comment replies (Elhussein Almasri)
• Address layout issues in the title cell of universal listings (Sage Abdullah)
• Support SVG icon id attributes with single quotes in the styleguide (Sage Abdullah)
• Do not show delete button on model edit views if per-instance permissions prevent deletion (Matt Westcott)
• Remove duplicate header in privacy dialog when a privacy setting is set on a parent page or collection (Matthias Brück)
• Allow renditions of .ico images (Julie Rymer)
• Fix the rendering of grouped choices when using ChoiceFilter in combination with choices (Sébastien Corbin)
• Add separators when displaying multiple error messages on a StructBlock (Kyle Bayliss)
• Specify verbose_name on TranslatableMixin.locale so that it is translated when used as a label (Romein van Buren)
• Disallow null characters in API filter values (Jochen Wersdörfer)
• Fix image preview when Willow optimizers are enabled (Alex Tomkins)
• Ensure external-to-internal link conversion works when the wagtail_serve view is on a non-root path (Sage Abdullah)
• Add missing for_instance method to PageLogEntryManager (Matt Westcott)
• Ensure that "User" column on history view is translatable (Romein van Buren)
• Handle StreamField migrations where the field value is null (Joshua Munn)
• Prevent incorrect menu ordering when order value is 0 (Ben Dickinson)
• Fix dynamic image serve view with certain backends (Sébastien Corbin)
• Show not allowed extension in error message (Sahil Jangra)
• Fix focal point chooser when localization enabled (Sébastien Corbin)
• Ensure that system checks for WAGTAIL_DATE_FORMAT, WAGTAIL_DATETIME_FORMAT and WAGTAIL_TIME_FORMAT take FORMAT_MODULE_PATH into account (Sébastien Corbin)
• Prevent rich text fields inside choosers from being duplicated when opened repeatedly (Sage Abdullah)

Documentation

• Remove duplicate section on frontend caching proxies from performance page (Jake Howard)
• Document restriction_type field on PageViewRestriction (Shlomo Markowitz)
• Document Wagtail's bug bounty policy (Jake Howard)
• Fix incorrect Sphinx-style code references to use MyST style (Byron Peebles)
• Document the fact that Orderable is not required for inline panels (Bojan Mihelac)
• Add note about prefers-reduced-motion to the accessibility documentation (Roel Koper)
• Update deployment instructions for Fly.io (Jeroen de Vries)
• Add better docs for generating URLs on creating admin views (Shlomo Markowitz)
• Document the vary_fields property for custom image filters (Daniel Kirkham)
• Fix documentation build errors (Himanshu Garg, Chris Shenton)
• Fix PDF export (Nathanaël Jourdane)

Maintenance

• Use DjangoJSONEncoder instead of custom LazyStringEncoder to serialize Draftail config (Sage Abdullah)
• Refactor image chooser pagination to check WAGTAILIMAGES_CHOOSER_PAGE_SIZE at runtime (Matt Westcott)
• Exclude the client/scss directory in Tailwind content config to speed up CSS compilation (Sage Abdullah)
• Split contrib.frontend_cache.backends into dedicated sub-modules (Andy Babic)
• Remove unused docs/autobuild.sh script (Sævar Öfjörð Magnússon)
• Replace urlparse with urlsplit to improve performance (Jake Howard)
• Optimize embed finder lookups (Jake Howard)
• Improve performance of initial admin loading by moving sprite hashing out of module import time (Jake Howard)
• Remove workaround and inline scripts for activating workflow actions (Sage Abdullah)
• Prevent 'BlockWidget' object has no attribute '_block_json' from masking errors during StreamField serialization (Matt Westcott)

Upgrade considerations - changes affecting all projects

Specifying a dict of distribution IDs for CloudFront cache invalidation is deprecated

Previous versions allowed passing a dict for DISTRIBUTION_ID within the WAGTAILFRONTENDCACHE configuration for a CloudFront backend, to allow specifying different distribution IDs for different hostnames. This is now deprecated; instead, multiple distribution IDs should be defined as multiple backends, with a HOSTNAMES parameter to define the hostnames associated with each one. For example, a configuration such as:

WAGTAILFRONTENDCACHE = {
    'cloudfront': {
        'BACKEND': 'wagtail.contrib.frontend_cache.backends.CloudfrontBackend',
        'DISTRIBUTION_ID': {
            'www.wagtail.org': 'your-distribution-id',
            'www.madewithwagtail.org': 'other-distribution-id',
        },
    },
}

should now be rewritten as:

WAGTAILFRONTENDCACHE = {
    'mainsite': {
        'BACKEND': 'wagtail.contrib.frontend_cache.backends.CloudfrontBackend',
        'DISTRIBUTION_ID': 'your-distribution-id',
        'HOSTNAMES': ['www.wagtail.org'],
    },
    'madewithwagtail': {
        'BACKEND': 'wagtail.contrib.frontend_cache.backends.CloudfrontBackend',
        'DISTRIBUTION_ID': 'other-distribution-id',
        'HOSTNAMES': ['www.madewithwagtail.org'],
    },
}

Changes to permissions registration for models with ModelViewSet and SnippetViewSet

Models registered with a ModelViewSet will now automatically have their {class}~django.contrib.auth.models.Permission objects registered in the Groups administration area. Previously, you need to use the register_permissions hook to register them.

If you have a model registered with a ModelViewSet and you registered the model's permissions using the register_permissions hook, you can now safely remove the hook.

If the viewset has {attr}~wagtail.admin.viewsets.model.ModelViewSet.inspect_view_enabled set to True, all permissions for the model are registered. Otherwise, the "view" permission is excluded from the registration.

To customize which permissions get registered for the model, you can override the {meth}~wagtail.admin.viewsets.model.ModelViewSet.get_permissions_to_register method.

This behavior now applies to snippets as well. Previously, the "view" permission for snippets is always registered regardless of inspect_view_enabled. If you wish to register the "view" permission, you can enable the inspect view:

class FooViewSet(SnippetViewSet):
    ...
    inspect_view_enabled = True

Alternatively, if you wish to register the "view" permission without enabling the inspect view (i.e. the previous behavior), you can override get_permissions_to_register like the following:

from django.contrib.auth.models import Permission
from django.contrib.contenttypes.models import ContentType

class FooViewSet(SnippetViewSet):
    def get_permissions_to_register(self):
        content_type = ContentType.objects.get_for_model(self.model)
        return Permission.objects.filter(content_type=content_type)

Deprecation of WAGTAIL_USER_EDIT_FORM, WAGTAIL_USER_CREATION_FORM, and WAGTAIL_USER_CUSTOM_FIELDS settings

This release introduces a customizable UserViewSet class, which can be used to customize various aspects of Wagtail's admin views for managing users, including the form classes for creating and editing users. As a result, the WAGTAIL_USER_EDIT_FORM, WAGTAIL_USER_CREATION_FORM, and WAGTAIL_USER_CUSTOM_FIELDS settings have been deprecated in favor of customizing the form classes via UserViewSet.get_form_class().

If you use the aforementioned settings, you can migrate your code by making the following changes.

Before

Given the following custom user model:

class User(AbstractUser):
    country = models.CharField(verbose_name='country', max_length=255)
    status = models.ForeignKey(MembershipStatus, on_delete=models.SET_NULL, null=True, default=1)

The following custom forms:

class CustomUserEditForm(UserEditForm):
    status = forms.ModelChoiceField(queryset=MembershipStatus.objects, required=True, label=_("Status"))


class CustomUserCreationForm(UserCreationForm):
    status = forms.ModelChoiceField(queryset=MembershipStatus.objects, required=True, label=_("Status"))

And the following settings:

WAGTAIL_USER_EDIT_FORM = "myapp.forms.CustomUserEditForm"
WAGTAIL_USER_CREATION_FORM = "myapp.forms.CustomUserCreationForm"
WAGTAIL_USER_CUSTOM_FIELDS = ["country", "status"]

After

Change the custom forms to the following:

class CustomUserEditForm(UserEditForm):
    status = forms.ModelChoiceField(queryset=MembershipStatus.objects, required=True, label=_("Status"))

    # Use ModelForm's automatic form fields generation for the model's `country` field,
    # but use an explicit custom form field for `status`.
    # This replaces the `WAGTAIL_USER_CUSTOM_FIELDS` setting.
    class Meta(UserEditForm.Meta):
        fields = UserEditForm.Meta.fields | {"country", "status"}

class CustomUserCreationForm(UserCreationForm):
    status = forms.ModelChoiceField(queryset=MembershipStatus.objects, required=True, label=_("Status"))

    # Use ModelForm's automatic form fields generation for the model's `country` field,
    # but use an explicit custom form field for `status`.
    # This replaces the `WAGTAIL_USER_CUSTOM_FIELDS` setting.
    class Meta(UserCreationForm.Meta):
        fields = UserEditForm.Meta.fields | {"country", "status"}

Create a custom UserViewSet subclass in e.g. myapp/viewsets.py:

# myapp/viewsets.py
from wagtail.users.views.users import UserViewSet as WagtailUserViewSet

from .forms import CustomUserCreationForm, CustomUserEditForm


class UserViewSet(WagtailUserViewSet):
    # This replaces the WAGTAIL_USER_EDIT_FORM and WAGTAIL_USER_CREATION_FORM settings
    def get_form_class(self, for_update=False):
        if for_update:
            return CustomUserEditForm
        return CustomUserCreationForm

If you already have a custom GroupViewSet as described in , you can reuse the custom WagtailUsersAppConfig subclass. Otherwise, create an apps.py file within your project folder (the one containing the top-level settings and urls modules) e.g. myproject/apps.py. Then, create a custom WagtailUsersAppConfig subclass in that file, with a user_viewset attribute pointing to the custom UserViewSet subclass:

# myproject/apps.py
from wagtail.users.apps import WagtailUsersAppConfig


class CustomUsersAppConfig(WagtailUsersAppConfig):
    user_viewset = "myapp.viewsets.UserViewSet"
    # If you have customized the GroupViewSet before
    group_viewset = "myapp.viewsets.GroupViewSet"

Replace wagtail.users in settings.INSTALLED_APPS with the path to CustomUsersAppConfig:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    ...,
    # Make sure you have two separate entries for the custom user model's app
    # and the custom app config for the wagtail.users app
    "myapp",  # an app that contains the custom user model
    "myproject.apps.CustomUsersAppConfig",  # a custom app config for the wagtail.users app
    # "wagtail.users",  # this should be removed in favour of the custom app config
    ...,
]

You can also place the `WagtailUsersAppConfig` subclass inside the same `apps.py` file of your custom user model's app (instead of in a `myproject/apps.py` file), but you need to be careful. Make sure to use two separate config classes instead of turning your existing `AppConfig` subclass into a `WagtailUsersAppConfig` subclass, as that would cause Django to pick up your custom user model as being part of `wagtail.users`. You may also need to set {attr}`~django.apps.AppConfig.default` to `True` in your own app's `AppConfig`, unless you already use a dotted path to the app's `AppConfig` subclass in `INSTALLED_APPS`.

For more details, see .

Upgrade considerations - changes affecting Wagtail customizations

Changes to report views with the new Universal Listings UI

The report views have been reimplemented to use the new Universal Listings UI, which introduces AJAX-based filtering and support for the wagtail.admin.ui.tables framework. As a result, a number of changes have been made to the ReportView and PageReportView classes, as well as their templates.

If you have custom report views as documented in , you will need to make the following changes.

Change title to page_title

The title attribute on the view class should be renamed to page_title:

 class UnpublishedChangesReportView(PageReportView):
-    title = "Pages with unpublished changes"
+    page_title = "Pages with unpublished changes"

Set up the results-only view

Set the index_url_name and index_results_url_name attributes on the view class:

 class UnpublishedChangesReportView(PageReportView):
+    index_url_name = "unpublished_changes_report"
+    index_results_url_name = "unpublished_changes_report_results"

and register the results-only view:

 @hooks.register("register_admin_urls")
 def register_unpublished_changes_report_url():
     return [
         path("reports/unpublished-changes/", UnpublishedChangesReportView.as_view(), name="unpublished_changes_report"),
+        # Add a results-only view to add support for AJAX-based filtering
+        path("reports/unpublished-changes/results/", UnpublishedChangesReportView.as_view(results_only=True), name="unpublished_changes_report_results"),
     ]

Adjust the templates

If you are only extending the templates to add your own markup for the listing table (and not other parts of the view template), you need to change the template_name into results_template_name on the view class.

For a page report, the following changes are needed:

• Change template_name to results_template_name, and optionally rename the template (e.g. reports/unpublished_changes_report.html to reports/unpublished_changes_report_results.html).
• The template should extend from wagtailadmin/reports/base_page_report_results.html.
• The listing and no_results blocks should be renamed to results and no_results_message, respectively.

 class UnpublishedChangesReportView(PageReportView):
-    template_name = "reports/unpublished_changes_report.html"
+    results_template_name = "reports/unpublished_changes_report_results.html"

 {# <project>/templates/reports/unpublished_changes_report_results.html #}

-{% extends "wagtailadmin/reports/base_page_report.html" %}
+{% extends "wagtailadmin/reports/base_page_report_results.html" %}

-{% block listing %}
+{% block results %}
     {% include "reports/include/_list_unpublished_changes.html" %}
 {% endblock %}
-{% block no_results %}
+{% block no_results_message %}
     <p>No pages with unpublished changes.</p>
 {% endblock %}

For a non-page report, the following changes are needed:

• Change template_name to results_template_name, and optionally rename the template (e.g. reports/custom_non_page_report.html to reports/custom_non_page_report_results.html).
• The template should extend from wagtailadmin/reports/base_report_results.html.
• Existing templates will typically define a results block containing both the results listing and the "no results" message; these should now become separate blocks named results and no_results_message.

Before:

class CustomNonPageReportView(ReportView):
    template_name = "reports/custom_non_page_report.html"

{# <project>/templates/reports/custom_non_page_report.html #}
{% extends "wagtailadmin/reports/base_report.html" %}

{% block results %}
    {% if object_list %}
        <table class="listing">
            <!-- Table markup goes here -->
        </table>
    {% else %}
        <p>No results found.</p>
    {% endif %}
{% endblock %}

After:

class CustomNonPageReportView(ReportView):
    results_template_name = "reports/custom_non_page_report_results.html"

{# <project>/templates/reports/custom_non_page_report_results.html #}
{% extends "wagtailadmin/reports/base_report_results.html" %}

{% block results %}
    <table class="listing">
        <!-- Table markup goes here -->
    </table>
{% endblock %}

{% block no_results_message %}
    <p>No results found.</p>
{% endblock %}

If you need to completely customize the view's template, you can still override the template_name attribute on the view class. Note that both ReportView and PageReportView now use the wagtailadmin/reports/base_report.html template, which now extends the wagtailadmin/generic/listing.html template. The wagtailadmin/reports/base_page_report.html template is now unused and should be replaced with wagtailadmin/reports/base_report.html.

If you override template_name, it is still necessary to set results_template_name to a template that extends wagtailadmin/reports/base_report_results.html (or wagtailadmin/reports/base_page_report_results.html for page reports), so the view can correctly update the listing and show the active filters as you apply or remove any filters.

Upgrade considerations - changes to undocumented internals

Deprecation of window.ActivateWorkflowActionsForDashboard and window.ActivateWorkflowActionsForEditView

The undocumented usage of the JavaScript window.ActivateWorkflowActionsForDashboard and window.ActivateWorkflowActionsForEditView functions will be removed in a future release.

These functions are only used by Wagtail to initialize event listeners to workflow action buttons via inline scripts and are never intended to be used in custom code. The inline scripts have been removed in favour of initializing the event listeners directly in the included workflow-action.js script. As a result, the functions no longer need to be globally-accessible.

Any custom workflow actions should be done using the documented approach for customizing the behavior of custom task types, such as by overriding Task.get_actions().