Best of both worlds tutorial: Next.js ❤️ Wagtail

Available online at wagtail.org/nextjs-djangocon / github.com/wagtail/nextjs-loves-wagtail.

👋 welcome to a self-paced headless CMS workshop! This workshop covers:

Initial project setup: what Wagtail and Next.js are, and how to set them up
Connecting Next.js with the backend
Deployment!

The workshop was created for live sessions with a mentor – but we expect it can all be done on your own anytime.

Ahead of the workshop

Please make sure to have the following installed:

Node.js v18 or v20 (also includes npm)
Python v3.8+ (also includes pip)
For deployment: Vercel CLI (and a Vercel account)

Introduction

Requirements (see above)
Wagtail as a CMS: Django, content models, admin.
Next.js as a framework: React, routing, server-side rendering, static site generation.

All following sections are self-directed! If you have any questions, please raise your hand or ask in the chat.

Your first Wagtail site

On the command line, let’s start by creating a folder for our project. We’ll use myproject in our examples, you can use something more descriptive if you prefer.

mkdir myproject
cd myproject

If you want to use version control, this is a good time to git init a new repository. Here is the .gitignore contents we recommend:

__pycache__
env
db.sqlite3
/media
/static

Install and run Wagtail

Create and activate a virtual environment

We recommend using a virtual environment, which isolates installed dependencies from other projects. We use venv, which is packaged with Python 3.

On Windows (cmd.exe):

py -m venv mysite\env
mysite\env\Scripts\activate.bat
# or:
mysite\env\Scripts\activate

On GNU/Linux or macOS (bash/zsh):

python -m venv env
source env/bin/activate

For other shells see the venv documentation.

Install Wagtail

Use pip to install Wagtail and its dependencies:

pip install wagtail==5.2

Generate your site

Wagtail provides a start command based on django-admin startproject. It will generate a new project with a few Wagtail-specific extras, including the required project settings, a "home" app with a blank HomePage model and basic templates, and a sample "search" app.

Run wagtail start with a project name (we chose mysite, you can choose myproject, or something else altogether) and the current directory (.):

wagtail start mysite .

Install project dependencies

This step isn’t needed if you’ve just installed Wagtail in a virtual environment. If you didn’t, make sure to:

pip install -r requirements.txt

Create the database

python manage.py migrate

Create an admin user

This will prompt you to create a new superuser account with full permissions. Email is optional. Note the password text won’t be visible when typed, for security reasons.

python manage.py createsuperuser

Start the server

python manage.py runserver

Then go to the URL given by runserver (in our examples we will use http://127.0.0.1:8000). If everything worked, it will show you a welcome page:

You can now access the administrative area at http://127.0.0.1:8000/admin using the superuser account you created. Here’s what it will look like once we start adding content:

Extend the HomePage model

Out of the box, the "home" app defines a blank HomePage model in models.py, along with a migration that creates a homepage and configures Wagtail to use it.

Edit home/models.py as follows, to add a body field to the model:

from django.db import models

from wagtail.models import Page
from wagtail.fields import RichTextField
from wagtail.admin.panels import FieldPanel


class HomePage(Page):
    body = RichTextField(blank=True)

    content_panels = Page.content_panels + [
        FieldPanel('body'),
    ]

body is defined as RichTextField, a special Wagtail field. When blank=True, it means that this field is not required and can be empty. You can use any of the Django core fields. content_panels define the capabilities and the layout of the editing interface. When you add fields to content_panels, it enables them to be edited on the Wagtail interface. For more information, see Page models.

Then run:

# Creates the migrations file.
python manage.py makemigrations
# Updates the database with your model changes.
python manage.py migrate

You must run the above commands each time you make changes to the model definition.

Now edit the homepage within the Wagtail admin area (on the side bar go to Pages and click the edit button beside Homepage) to see the new body field. Publish the page by selecting Publish at the bottom of the page editor, rather than Save Draft.

We’ll then update home/templates/home/home_page.html to contain the following:

{% extends "base.html" %}
{% load wagtailcore_tags %}

{% block content %}
    <div class="intro">{{ page.body|richtext }}</div>
{% endblock %}

In the above code, we load Wagtail’s template tags & filters using {% load wagtailcore_tags %}. This allows the use of the richtext filter to escape and print the contents of the RichTextField.

A basic blog

We are now ready to create a blog. We’ll make a separate app:

python manage.py startapp blog

Add the new blog app to INSTALLED_APPS in mysite/settings/base.py.

Blog index

Let's start with a simple index page for our blog. In blog/models.py:

from wagtail.models import Page
from wagtail.fields import RichTextField
from wagtail.admin.panels import FieldPanel


class BlogIndexPage(Page):
    intro = RichTextField(blank=True)

    content_panels = Page.content_panels + [
        FieldPanel('intro')
    ]

Run:

python manage.py makemigrations
python manage.py migrate
# On Windows:
mkdir blog\templates\blog
type nul > blog\templates\blog\blog_index_page.html
# Other platforms:
mkdir -p blog/templates/blog
touch blog/templates/blog/blog_index_page.html

Since the model is called BlogIndexPage, we use a template name of blog_index_page.html. This default behaviour can be overridden if needed.

In your blog_index_page.html file enter the following content:

{% extends "base.html" %}
{% load wagtailcore_tags %}

{% block content %}
    <h1>{{ page.title }}</h1>
    <div class="intro">{{ page.intro|richtext }}</div>

    {% for post in page.get_children %}
        <h2><a href="{% pageurl post %}">{{ post.title }}</a></h2>
        {{ post.specific.intro }}
        {{ post.specific.body|richtext }}
    {% endfor %}
{% endblock %}

Note the pageurl tag, which is similar to Django's url tag but takes a Wagtail Page object as an argument.

From our public homepage http://127.0.0.1:8000/, click the Wagtail bird and then "Add a child page".

Choose "Blog index page" from the list of the page types. If Wagtail shows a 404 – you forgot to make & run migrations!
Use "Our Blog" as your page title, make sure it has the slug "blog" on the Promote tab, and publish it.

You should now be able to access the url http://127.0.0.1:8000/blog/ on your site (note how the slug from the Promote tab defines the page URL). If there is a TemplateDoesNotExist exception, it means the template is missing or isn’t being picked up by Django. You may need to restart the server so that Django picks up the new template.

Blog posts

Now we need a model and template for our blog posts. In blog/models.py:

from django.db import models

from wagtail.models import Page
from wagtail.fields import RichTextField
from wagtail.admin.panels import FieldPanel
from wagtail.search import index


class BlogIndexPage(Page):
    intro = RichTextField(blank=True)

    content_panels = Page.content_panels + [
        FieldPanel('intro')
    ]

    # Only allow BlogPages beneath this page.
    subpage_types = ["blog.BlogPage"]


class BlogPage(Page):
    # Different from the real publication date, for editorial control.
    date = models.DateField("Post date")
    intro = models.CharField(max_length=250)
    body = RichTextField(blank=True)

    search_fields = Page.search_fields + [
        index.SearchField('intro'),
        index.SearchField('body'),
    ]

    content_panels = Page.content_panels + [
        FieldPanel('date'),
        FieldPanel('intro'),
        FieldPanel('body'),
    ]

    # Only allow this page to be created beneath a BlogIndexPage.
    parent_page_types = ["blog.BlogIndexPage"]

In the model above, we import index as this makes the model searchable. You can then list fields that you want to be searchable for the user.

Like for the index page, run:

python manage.py makemigrations
python manage.py migrate
# On Windows:
type nul > blog\templates\blog\blog_page.html
# Other platforms:
touch blog/templates/blog/blog_page.html

Now add the following content to your newly created blog_page.html file:

{% extends "base.html" %}
{% load wagtailcore_tags %}

{% block content %}
    <h1>{{ page.title }}</h1>
    <p class="meta">{{ page.date }}</p>
    <div class="intro">{{ page.intro }}</div>

    {{ page.body|richtext }}

    <p><a href="{{ page.get_parent.url }}">Return to blog</a></p>
{% endblock %}

Note the use of Wagtail's built-in get_parent() method to obtain the URL of the blog this post is a part of.

From http://127.0.0.1:8000/blog/, click "Add a child page" again, and this time the "Blog Page" type will automatically be selected.

Wagtail gives you full control over what kinds of content can be created under various parent content types. By default, any page type can be a child of any other page type. We updated the models so that BlogPage is automatically selected when creating a page under a BlogIndexPage, and we disallowed the creation of a BlogPage under other page types. This makes the user experience more seamless and prevents editors from selecting the wrong page type.

Publish the blog post when you are done editing. Create more if you feel like it (we’ll use three in our examples).

You should now have the very beginnings of a working blog. Access http://127.0.0.1:8000/blog/ again and you should see something like this:

Titles should link to post pages, and a link back to the blog's homepage should appear in the footer of each post page.

Your first Next.js site

Like we used wagtail start, Next.js also has a project scaffolding command: create-next-app. We'll use this to create a new project:

npx create-next-app@latest --typescript --eslint --tailwind --use-npm frontend
cd frontend

For all prompts, you may use the default: src/ No, App Router Yes, custom import alias No. We create our Next.js site under frontend, so Wagtail and Next.js are clearly separated.

All subsequent commands for the Next.js site will be within frontend.

# Run the development server
npm run dev

You can visit the Next.js website by accessing http://127.0.0.1:3000.

To get started with a basic page on Next.js, you can edit app/page.tsx. For example, we'll change the existing content to:

export default function Home() {
  return (
    <main className="flex min-h-screen flex-col items-center justify-center p-24">
      <div className="relative flex place-items-center">
        <h1 className="text-4xl font-bold mb-8">Welcome! 🎉</h1>
      </div>
      <p className="mb-8">
        This is a website built with Next.js and Wagtail 🐦
      </p>
      <a className="px-4 py-2 rounded border hover:text-blue-100" href="/blog">
        Visit the blog
      </a>
    </main>
  );
}

You'll notice that the link to the blog page doesn't work yet. We'll need to create a Next.js page for it.

Before that, we will go back to our Wagtail code to enable the REST API so we can use it in our frontend.

Integrating Wagtail and Next.js

Enabling the REST API in Wagtail

Wagtail has a built-in REST API that we can use to fetch data from our Wagtail site. To enable it, we need to add wagtail.api.v2 and rest_framework to our INSTALLED_APPS in mysite/settings/base.py.

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    ...
    'wagtail.admin',
    'wagtail.api.v2',
    'wagtail',
    'rest_framework',
    ...
]

Create a mysite/api.py file with the following content:

from wagtail.api.v2.views import PagesAPIViewSet
from wagtail.api.v2.router import WagtailAPIRouter
from wagtail.images.api.v2.views import ImagesAPIViewSet
from wagtail.documents.api.v2.views import DocumentsAPIViewSet

# Create the router. "wagtailapi" is the URL namespace
api_router = WagtailAPIRouter('wagtailapi')

# Add the three endpoints using the "register_endpoint" method.
# The first parameter is the name of the endpoint (such as pages, images). This
# is used in the URL of the endpoint
# The second parameter is the endpoint class that handles the requests
api_router.register_endpoint('pages', PagesAPIViewSet)
api_router.register_endpoint('images', ImagesAPIViewSet)
api_router.register_endpoint('documents', DocumentsAPIViewSet)

Next, register the URLs so Django can route requests into the API by editing mysite/urls.py:

from .api import api_router

...

urlpatterns = urlpatterns + [
    ...,

    path('api/v2/', api_router.urls),

    ...,

    # Ensure that the api_router line appears above the default Wagtail page serving route
    path("", include(wagtail_urls)),
]

With this configuration, pages will be available at /api/v2/pages/.

Adding API fields to the Wagtail page models

Wagtail only exposes some fields of the base Page model by default. In order to use the fields we defined earlier, we'll need to add them to the API. This can be done by adding an api_fields attribute to the model.

For example, in blog/models.py, add the following:

...
from wagtail.api import APIField
...


class BlogIndexPage(Page):
    intro = RichTextField(blank=True)

    api_fields = [
        APIField('intro'),
    ]

    ...

...

class BlogPage(Page):
    date = models.DateField("Post date")
    intro = models.CharField(max_length=250)
    body = RichTextField(blank=True)

    api_fields = [
        APIField('date'),
        APIField('intro'),
        APIField('body'),
    ]

You will now be able to fetch the pages data through the REST API. For an example query, try visiting http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/v2/pages/?type=blog.BlogPage&fields=date,intro,body on your web browser.

Fetching data from the Wagtail API in the Next.js frontend

We will add a new page to our Next.js site. To do so, create a new frontend/app/blog directory and a frontend/app/blog/page.tsx inside it.

We'll start off with the following content:

export default async function BlogIndex() {
  const posts = [
    {
      id: 1,
      title: "First post",
      date: "2022-01-01",
      intro: "This is the first post",
      meta: {
        slug: "first-post",
      },
    },
    {
      id: 2,
      title: "Second post",
      date: "2021-01-02",
      intro: "This is the second post",
      meta: {
        slug: "first-post",
      },
    },
  ];

  return (
    <main>
      <div className="mb-8">
        <h1 className="text-4xl font-bold mb-2">Blog</h1>
        <div><p>Some introduction</p></div>
      </div>
      <ul>
        {posts.map((child) => (
          <li key={child.id} className="mb-4">
            <a className="underline" href={`blog/${child.meta.slug}`}>
              <h2>{child.title}</h2>
            </a>
            <time dateTime={child.date}>
              {new Date(child.date).toDateString()}
            </time>
            <p>{child.intro}</p>
          </li>
        ))}
      </ul>
    </main>
  );
}

You can access the page by going to http://127.0.0.1:3000/blog. The blog link on the home page of your Next.js website should now also work.

Note that the data is still a placeholder and hardcoded in the Next.js code. We will now continue by integrating the page with Wagtail's REST API.

To do so, we can change the posts definition with the following:

interface BlogIndexPage {
  id: number;
  title: string;
  intro: string;
}

interface BlogPage {
  id: number;
  meta: {
    slug: string;
  };
  title: string;
  date: string;
  intro: string;
}

export default async function BlogIndex() {
  // Fetch the BlogIndexPage's details
  const indexPages = await fetch(
    `http://localhost:8000/api/v2/pages/?${new URLSearchParams({
      type: "blog.BlogIndexPage",
      slug: "blog",
      fields: "intro",
    })}`,
    {
      headers: {
        Accept: "application/json",
      },
    }
  ).then((response) => response.json());

  // There's only one with the slug "blog"
  const index: BlogIndexPage = indexPages.items[0];

  // Fetch the BlogPages that are children of the BlogIndexPage instance
  const data = await fetch(
    `http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/v2/pages/?${new URLSearchParams({
      type: "blog.BlogPage",
      child_of: index.id.toString(),
      fields: ["date", "intro"].join(","),
    })}`,
    {
      headers: {
        Accept: "application/json",
      },
    }
  ).then((response) => response.json());

  // Use BlogPage instances as the posts
  const posts: BlogPage[] = data.items;

  return (
    <main>
      <div className="mb-8">
        <h1 className="text-4xl font-bold mb-2">{index.title}</h1>
        <div dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{ __html: index.intro }}></div>
      </div>
      {/* The rest is the same as the previous example */}
      <ul>
        {posts.map((child) => (
          <li key={child.id} className="mb-4">
            <a className="underline" href={`blog/${child.meta.slug}`}>
              <h2>{child.title}</h2>
            </a>
            <time dateTime={child.date}>
              {new Date(child.date).toDateString()}
            </time>
            <p>{child.intro}</p>
          </li>
        ))}
      </ul>
    </main>
  );
}

After you save the file and reload the page, you will notice that the blog index page now uses the data from Wagtail. Great!

We'll just add one more page to complete our Next.js website, which is the blog post itself. Start by creating a new frontend/app/blog/[slug] directory and a frontend/app/blog/[slug]/page.tsx file. We'll use the following code to fetch the data from Wagtail and render it on the page:

interface BlogPage {
  id: number;
  meta: {
    slug: string;
  };
  title: string;
  date: string;
  intro: string;
  body: string;
}

export default async function Blog({
  params: { slug },
}: {
  params: { slug: string };
}) {
  // Fetch the BlogPage's details based on the slug
  const data = await fetch(
    `http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/v2/pages/?${new URLSearchParams({
      slug,
      type: "blog.BlogPage",
      fields: ["date", "intro", "body"].join(","),
    })}`,
    {
      headers: {
        Accept: "application/json",
      },
    }
  ).then((response) => response.json());

  const post: BlogPage = data.items[0];

  return (
    <main>
      <div>
        <h1 className="text-4xl font-bold mb-2">{post.title}</h1>
        <time dateTime={post.date}>
          {new Date(post.date).toDateString()}
        </time>
        <p className="my-4">{post.intro}</p>
      </div>
      <div dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{ __html: post.body }}></div>
    </main>
  );
}

There is one missing piece to this page, though: this page is rendered on-demand at request time. While Next.js does cache the page after the first render, this means that new pages cannot be rendered if the Wagtail server isn't running. To fix this, we can add a generateStaticParams function that tells Next.js what pages should be pre-rendered at build time.

Add the following to the bottom of your frontend/app/blog/[slug]/page.tsx file:

export async function generateStaticParams() {
  const data = await fetch(
    `http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/v2/pages/?${new URLSearchParams({
      type: "blog.BlogPage",
    })}`,
    {
      headers: {
        Accept: "application/json",
      },
    }
  ).then((response) => response.json());

  return data.items.map((post: BlogPage) => ({
    slug: post.meta.slug,
  }));
}

And that's it! As long as the Wagtail server is running when the Next.js website is built (with npm run build), all of our blog pages will be rendered at build time. This means that the Next.js pages will still work even if you stop the Wagtail server.

Deployment

We will deploy our Next.js site as a static site on Vercel. Our Wagtail site will not be deployed in this workshop, but you can deploy it by following the documentation.

Before we start, log in to Vercel on the command line:

vercel login

Make sure that your Wagtail server is running. Then, run the following command to build your Next.js site:

vercel build

For most prompts, you may use the default:

Run vercel pull? Yes
Set up path/to/frontend? Yes
Link to existing project? No
What's your project's name? Any, e.g. nextjs-wagtail
In which directory is your code located? ./
Auto-detected Project Settings (Next.js):
- Build Command: next build
- Development Command: next dev --port $PORT
- Install Command: yarn install, pnpm install, or npm install
- Output Directory: Next.js default
Want to modify these settings? No

When the build is completed, it should show something like ✅ Build Completed in .vercel/output [4s].

Now, run the following command to deploy your Next.js site:

vercel deploy --prebuilt

On a successful deployment, you will be given a production URL. Open it in your browser to see your Next.js site!

Notes

In this tutorial, the Next.js site is deployed as a static site. This means that the Next.js site is built once, and the built files are served to the user. If you have deployed your Wagtail site, you can use it along with the server-side rendering capabilities of Next.js to create a dynamic site that can be tailored on a per-request basis.

Resources

Official Wagtail documentation
Official Next.js documentation
Wagtail demo: bakerydemo site
Wagtail hosting: Fly.io Wagtail tutorial
Wagtail + Next.js boilerplate: Pipit
Official Wagtail headless support documentation
Graphene (GraphQL) for Wagtail: Wagtail Grapple
Stawberry (GraphQL) for Wagtail: Strawberry Wagtail (experimental)
Next.js utilities for Wagtail: NextJS Wagtail (experimental)
Configuring custom domains on Vercel
Example urlpatterns configuration for headless Django

Credits

The workshop was initially created for DjangoCon Europe 2023 by @laymonage and @thibaudcolas. @vossisboss also runs the workshop online.

Name		Name	Last commit message	Last commit date
Latest commit History 53 Commits
blog		blog
frontend		frontend
home		home
media		media
mysite		mysite
search		search
tutorial_screenshots/wagtail		tutorial_screenshots/wagtail
.dockerignore		.dockerignore
.gitignore		.gitignore
Dockerfile		Dockerfile
LICENSE		LICENSE
README.md		README.md
manage.py		manage.py
requirements.txt		requirements.txt
tutorial_10.db.sqlite3		tutorial_10.db.sqlite3
tutorial_2.db.sqlite3		tutorial_2.db.sqlite3
tutorial_7.db.sqlite3		tutorial_7.db.sqlite3
tutorial_9.db.sqlite3		tutorial_9.db.sqlite3

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Best of both worlds tutorial: Next.js ❤️ Wagtail

Ahead of the workshop

Introduction

Your first Wagtail site

Install and run Wagtail

Create and activate a virtual environment

Install Wagtail

Generate your site

Install project dependencies

Create the database

Create an admin user

Start the server

Extend the HomePage model

A basic blog

Blog index

Blog posts

Your first Next.js site

Integrating Wagtail and Next.js

Enabling the REST API in Wagtail

Adding API fields to the Wagtail page models

Fetching data from the Wagtail API in the Next.js frontend

Deployment

Notes

Resources

Related

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About

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Contributors 3

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Best of both worlds tutorial: Next.js ❤️ Wagtail

Ahead of the workshop

Introduction

Your first Wagtail site

Install and run Wagtail

Create and activate a virtual environment

Install Wagtail

Generate your site

Install project dependencies

Create the database

Create an admin user

Start the server

Extend the HomePage model

A basic blog

Blog index

Blog posts

Your first Next.js site

Integrating Wagtail and Next.js

Enabling the REST API in Wagtail

Adding API fields to the Wagtail page models

Fetching data from the Wagtail API in the Next.js frontend

Deployment

Notes

Resources

Related

Credits

About

Resources

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Contributors 3

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