wagtail/docs/advanced_topics/documents/custom_document_model.md

Custom document model

An alternate Document model can be used to add custom behaviour and additional fields.

You need to complete the following steps in your project to do this:

• Create a new document model that inherits from wagtail.documents.models.AbstractDocument. This is where you would add additional fields.
• Point WAGTAILDOCS_DOCUMENT_MODEL to the new model.

Here's an example:

# models.py
from django.db import models

from wagtail.documents.models import Document, AbstractDocument

class CustomDocument(AbstractDocument):
    # Custom field example:
    source = models.CharField(
        max_length=255,
        blank=True,
        null=True
    )

    admin_form_fields = Document.admin_form_fields + (
        # Add all custom fields names to make them appear in the form:
        'source',
    )

Then in your settings module:

# Ensure that you replace app_label with the app you placed your custom
# model in.
WAGTAILDOCS_DOCUMENT_MODEL = 'app_label.CustomDocument'

Migrating from the built-in document model:

When changing an existing site to use a custom document model, no documents
will be copied to the new model automatically. Copying old documents to the
new model would need to be done manually with a
{ref}`data migration <django:data-migrations>`.

Templates that reference the built-in document model will continue
to work as before

Referring to the document model

.. module:: wagtail.documents

.. autofunction:: get_document_model

.. autofunction:: get_document_model_string