wagtail-thumbnails

A drop-in Wagtail StreamField block + DRF serializer that turns any uploaded image into a multi-variant WebP payload with dimensions and focal points - ready for headless frontends.

What you get

• A ThumbnailBlock - a thin extension of Wagtail's built-in ImageBlock that adds a pluggable validator pipeline and emits a ThumbnailSerializer payload
• A ThumbnailSerializer that emits:
  • Source URL
  • Resolved alt text (block override → image description → null; titles are intentionally not used)
  • Focal point (from Wagtail's built-in picker)
  • A configurable map of responsive variants (defaults: full_hd, large, medium, small) - each with url, width, height, format
• An ImageResolutionValidator you can configure globally (WAGTAIL_THUMBNAILS settings) or per-field
• Settings-driven variants - ship sensible defaults, override per project

You upload JPEG/PNG. Wagtail/Pillow generates and caches WebP renditions on first request. No user-side conversion required.

Install

Requires Django 4.2+, Wagtail 6.3+ (the block subclasses Wagtail's built-in ImageBlock, added in 6.3), and DRF 3.14+.

pip install wagtail-thumbnails

Add to INSTALLED_APPS:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    # ...
    "wagtail_thumbnails",
]

Quickstart

StreamField block

from wagtail.fields import StreamField
from wagtail_thumbnails.blocks import ThumbnailBlock

class ArticlePage(Page):
    body = StreamField([
        ("thumbnail", ThumbnailBlock()),
        # ... your other blocks
    ])

ThumbnailBlock is a subclass of Wagtail's ImageBlock, so editors get the same image / alt_text / decorative UI and behaviours - including the alt-text-required check (a value must have alt text or be marked decorative). The block adds:

1. A configurable validator pipeline (see Validation).
2. A multi-variant API payload via ThumbnailSerializer.get_api_representation.

Nested serializer

from rest_framework import serializers
from wagtail_thumbnails.serializers import ThumbnailSerializer

class ProductSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    hero_image = ThumbnailSerializer()

    class Meta:
        model = Product
        fields = ["hero_image"]

Example output

{
  "src": "https://cdn.example.com/media/images/hero.jpg",
  "alt_text": "A sunset over the bay",
  "focal_point": { "x": 400, "y": 300, "width": 100, "height": 100 },
  "variants": {
    "full_hd": { "url": "https://.../hero.fill-1920x1280.format-webp.webp", "width": 1920, "height": 1280, "format": "webp" },
    "large":   { "url": "https://.../hero.fill-800x533.format-webp.webp",   "width": 800,  "height": 533,  "format": "webp" },
    "medium":  { "url": "https://.../hero.fill-450x300.format-webp.webp",   "width": 450,  "height": 300,  "format": "webp" },
    "small":   { "url": "https://.../hero.fill-125x83.format-webp.webp",    "width": 125,  "height": 83,   "format": "webp" }
  }
}

Notes on the shape:

• focal_point is null when no focal point is set. Its width / height are null when only a centre point was picked (no focal area).
• alt_text is null when nothing is available. Wagtail titles are intentionally not used as alt text - they're typically filenames, which makes for a poor screen-reader experience.
• The block emits alt_text: "" (empty string, not null) when the editor ticks the Decorative checkbox. Mark purely visual imagery this way so assistive tech can skip it.
• Variants never upscale: if the source is narrower than a variant's target width, the variant is generated at the source's native dimensions.

Configuration

All settings live under a single dict. User-supplied keys override defaults (variant maps fully replace, not merge).

WAGTAIL_THUMBNAILS = {
    "VARIANTS": {
        "full_hd": {"width": 1920, "format": "webp", "quality": 80},
        "large":   {"width": 800,  "format": "webp", "quality": 80},
        "medium":  {"width": 450,  "format": "webp", "quality": 80},
        "small":   {"width": 125,  "format": "webp", "quality": 40},
    },
    "MIN_IMAGE_WIDTH": 1920,   # optional
    "MIN_IMAGE_HEIGHT": 1080,  # optional
}

Supported format values: webp (default), jpeg, png. quality is honoured for webp and jpeg.

Misconfigurations (unknown keys, bad variant shapes, unsupported formats, out-of-range quality) raise ImproperlyConfigured at first access - not at request time.

Validation

ThumbnailBlock accepts a validators= keyword argument: an iterable of callables of the shape f(image) -> None that raise django.core.exceptions.ValidationError on failure. The default is the module-level image_resolution_validator, which itself silently passes any image until you configure MIN_IMAGE_WIDTH / MIN_IMAGE_HEIGHT (globally or per-instance) - so adding the block to a project without any settings is safe and side-effect-free.

from wagtail_thumbnails.blocks import ThumbnailBlock
from wagtail_thumbnails.validators import ImageResolutionValidator, image_resolution_validator

# 1. Defaults - reads MIN_IMAGE_* from WAGTAIL_THUMBNAILS, or skips if unset.
ThumbnailBlock()

# 2. Per-field threshold, ignoring whatever is in settings.
ThumbnailBlock(validators=[ImageResolutionValidator(min_width=1920, min_height=1080)])

# 3. Disable validation entirely on this field.
ThumbnailBlock(validators=[])

# 4. Add extra checks on top of the default.
def must_be_landscape(image):
    if image.width <= image.height:
        raise ValidationError("Landscape orientation required.")

ThumbnailBlock(validators=[image_resolution_validator, must_be_landscape])

# 5. Project-wide override via subclass.
class HeroImageBlock(ThumbnailBlock):
    default_validators = (ImageResolutionValidator(min_width=1920, min_height=1080),)

ImageResolutionValidator resolves each axis independently: setting only min_width (per-instance or in settings) leaves the height check disabled, and vice versa. Per-instance values take precedence over the global setting; pass None to fall back to the setting.

The validator pipeline runs from ThumbnailBlock.clean(), on top of Wagtail's built-in ImageBlock checks (a value must have alt text or be marked decorative). Validators run for non-empty values only - an empty optional block is not run through the pipeline.

Migrating from ImageChooserBlock

ThumbnailBlock subclasses Wagtail's ImageBlock, whose on-disk JSON shape inside a StreamField is {"image": <id>, "alt_text": "...", "decorative": false} - different from a bare ImageChooserBlock (whose value is just an image ID). Existing rows need a one-shot data migration:

# yourapp/migrations/00XX_migrate_image_chooser_to_thumbnail.py
from django.db import migrations

OLD_TYPE = "image_block"
NEW_TYPE = "thumbnail"


def forwards(apps, schema_editor):
    YourPage = apps.get_model("yourapp", "YourPage")
    for page in YourPage.objects.all():
        changed = False
        for block in page.body.raw_data:
            if block["type"] == OLD_TYPE:
                block["type"] = NEW_TYPE
                block["value"] = {"image": block["value"], "alt_text": "", "decorative": False}
                changed = True
        if changed:
            page.save()


class Migration(migrations.Migration):
    dependencies = [("yourapp", "00XX_previous")]
    operations = [migrations.RunPython(forwards, migrations.RunPython.noop)]

For revisions (PageRevision), apply the same transform to revision.content.

If you're already on Wagtail's own ImageBlock, no data migration is needed - the StructBlock shape matches and ThumbnailBlock is a drop-in replacement.

Development

git clone https://github.com/profilsoftware/wagtail-thumbnails
cd wagtail-thumbnails
uv sync --extra dev
uv run pytest
uv run ruff check .
uv run mypy src/