Searching

Searching Pages

Wagtail provides a search method on the QuerySet for all page models:

# Search future EventPages
>>> from wagtail.wagtailcore.models import EventPage
>>> EventPage.objects.filter(date__gt=timezone.now()).search("Hello world!")

All methods of PageQuerySet are supported by wagtailsearch:

# Search all live EventPages that are under the events index
>>> EventPage.objects.live().descendant_of(events_index).search("Event")
[<EventPage: Event 1>, <EventPage: Event 2>]

An example page search view

Here’s an example Django view that could be used to add a “search” page to your site:

# views.py

from django.shortcuts import render

from wagtail.wagtailcore.models import Page
from wagtail.wagtailsearch.models import Query


def search(request):
    # Search
    search_query = request.GET.get('query', None)
    if search_query:
        search_results = Page.objects.live().search(search_query)

        # Log the query so Wagtail can suggest promoted results
        Query.get(search_query).add_hit()
    else:
        search_results = Page.objects.none()

    # Render template
    return render(request, 'search_results.html', {
        'search_query': search_query,
        'search_results': search_results,
    })

And here’s a template to go with it:

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

{% block title %}Search{% endblock %}

{% block content %}
    <form action="{% url 'search' %}" method="get">
        <input type="text" name="query" value="{{ search_query }}">
        <input type="submit" value="Search">
    </form>

    {% if search_results %}
        <ul>
            {% for result in search_results %}
                <li>
                    <h4><a href="{% pageurl result %}">{{ result }}</a></h4>
                    {% if result.search_description %}
                        {{ result.search_description|safe }}
                    {% endif %}
                </li>
            {% endfor %}
        </ul>
    {% elif search_query %}
        No results found
    {% else %}
        Please type something into the search box
    {% endif %}
{% endblock %}

Editor’s picks

Editor’s picks are a way of explicitly linking relevant content to search terms, so results pages can contain curated content in addition to results from the search algorithm.

You can get a list of editors picks for a particular query using the Query class:

editors_picks = Query.get(search_query).editors_picks.all()

Each editors pick contains the following fields:

page

The page object associated with the pick. Use {% pageurl editors_pick.page %} to generate a URL or provide other properties of the page object.

description

The description entered when choosing the pick, perhaps explaining why the page is relevant to the search terms.

Searching Images, Documents and custom models

You can search these by using the search method on the search backend:

>>> from wagtail.wagtailimages.models import Image
>>> from wagtail.wagtailsearch.backends import get_search_backend

# Search images
>>> s = get_search_backend()
>>> s.search("Hello", Image)
[<Image: Hello>, <Image: Hello world!>]

You can also pass a QuerySet into the search method which allows you to add filters to your search results:

>>> from wagtail.wagtailimages.models import Image
>>> from wagtail.wagtailsearch.backends import get_search_backend

# Search images
>>> s = get_search_backend()
>>> s.search("Hello", Image.objects.filter(uploaded_by_user=user))
[<Image: Hello>]

This should work the same way for Documents and custom models as well.