wagtail-write-api

A read/write REST API for Wagtail CMS.

Wagtail's built-in API is read-only, designed for headless frontends. This plugin adds full content management: create, edit, publish, and delete pages and images via a REST API with automatic OpenAPI documentation.

Documentation

Features

• Schema discovery so clients can inspect page types, snippet types, and their fields
• Page CRUD with draft/publish workflow, revision history, copy, and move
• Snippet CRUD for models registered with @register_snippet (categories, tags, reusable content)
• Image management with multipart upload and configurable renditions
• StreamField read/write with round-trip fidelity
• Rich text input in Markdown, HTML, or Wagtail's internal format
• Wagtail permissions enforced as in the admin
• OpenAPI docs generated automatically from Pydantic schemas

Quick start

pip install wagtail-write-api

# settings.py
INSTALLED_APPS = [
    ...
    "wagtail_write_api",
]

# urls.py
urlpatterns = [
    path("api/write/v1/", include("wagtail_write_api.urls")),
    ...
]

Create a token and start using the API:

python manage.py create_api_token admin
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer <token>" http://localhost:8000/api/write/v1/pages/

Interactive API docs are served at /api/write/v1/docs.

Note: All API URLs require a trailing slash (e.g. /pages/, /pages/3/). Requests without a trailing slash will receive a 301 redirect.

Client

wagapi is a CLI client for this API, optimised for LLM orchestration. It translates CLI commands into HTTP calls and returns structured output:

uvx wagapi schema                                    # discover content model
uvx wagapi pages create testapp.BlogPage \
  --parent /blog/ --title "Hello" --field "body:..."  # create a page
uvx wagapi snippets list testapp.Category            # list snippets

Requirements

• Python 3.10+
• Wagtail 6.0+

Documentation

Full documentation is at tomdyson.github.io/wagtail-write-api, covering:

• Installation
• Quickstart
• Configuration
• Pages API reference
• Images API reference
• Rich text guide
• StreamField guide
• Permissions guide

Development

git clone https://github.com/tomdyson/wagtail-write-api.git
cd wagtail-write-api
uv venv && uv pip install -e ".[dev]"
uv run pytest

Run the example app:

cd example
uv run python manage.py migrate
uv run python manage.py seed_demo
uv run python manage.py runserver

Releasing to PyPI

1. Update the version in pyproject.toml and src/wagtail_write_api/__init__.py
2. Commit, push to main
3. Create a GitHub release: gh release create v0.2.0 --generate-notes

The publish workflow builds and uploads to PyPI automatically via trusted publishing.

Not yet supported

The following Wagtail features are not yet covered by the API:

• Documents — DocumentChooserBlock and document uploads. Only images have API support currently.
• Multi-site — the API assumes a single default site. Path resolution and url_path may behave unexpectedly with multiple Site objects.
• Locales / translations — no support for wagtail-localize or Wagtail's built-in locale features. Pages are created in the default locale only.
• TableBlock, EmbedBlock, RawHTMLBlock — StreamField round-trip works for common block types, but these specialised blocks are untested and may not serialise correctly.
• Scheduled publishing — go_live_at / expire_at fields are not exposed.
• Search promotion and redirects — no API coverage.

Contributions welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.

Licence

BSD 3-Clause. See LICENSE.