Enabling the AttachFile action

The AttachFile action lets a page have multiple attached files. Since file uploads could be abused for DoS (Denial of Service) attacks, AttachFile is an action that has to be enabled by the wiki administrator. See Configuration of MoinMoin for details.

Creating attachments

To create a new attachment, you can either add an attachment link to any page (see below on how to do that), or click on the AtttachFile link at the bottom of the page. In the first case, you will see an Upload new attachment link after saving the page. Clicking on it will lead you to the upload page, just like directly clicking on the AttachFile link.

The upload form consist of three fields, in addition to the file input there are two optional fields, one to specify a MIME type for the file (which will be detected automatically otherwise), the second to store the file under a different name than on your own computer.

An upload will never overwrite an existing file. If there is a name conflict, you have to rename the file that you want to upload. Otherwise, if "Rename to" is left blank, the original filename will be used.

Existing attachments may be viewed, downloaded, or removed, depending on the configuration of the wiki and the access rights of the user, if ACLs are enabled. For example, an attachment cannot be deleted if the user doesn't have the delete permission on the particular page.

Any upload or deletion of attachments is reflected on RecentChanges and thus subject to peer review. Unlike page changes, there is no history though, so keep a local copy of files so you can revert possible vandalism.

Listing and information about attachments

Two macros are defined which give information about attachments on a page. The [[AttachInfo]] macro gives a short sentance about any attachments:-

There are 0 attachment(s) stored for this page.

The [[AttachList]] macro lists files attached to a page:-

Linking to attachments

To refer to attachments on a page, use attachment:filename.ext; a link of this kind follows all the rules for normal links, i.e. pictures are automatically inlined. Do not use the URL of the [get] link you can see on the attachments upload page, since these links are subject to change and can break easily on reconfigurations of the wiki. To refer to files attached to other pages, use attachment:WikiName/filename.ext.

Instead of attachment:, you can also use inline:, which tries to inline the attachment's content. For pictures (files ending in .gif, .jpg, .jpeg, or .png) there is no difference. For Python sources (i.e. attachments with a .py extension), they are shown as syntax-highlighted source displays. For all other files, the behaviour is the same as for simple attachment: links.

The third type of link is drawing:, explained in the next section.

Editing vector drawings

A link looking like drawing:picturename will allow you to interactively edit vector diagrams via the built-in Java applet. The applet will then store three attachments, "picturename.draw", "picturename.png" and "picturename.map". After you first saved a drawing, the generated PNG picture is displayed for the drawing: link. The MAP is used to activate parts of the image as links. This means that you only need Java enabled for editing, while displaying the results works with any browser.

To edit a drawing after the first save, click on AttachFile and use the [edit] link that is displayed instead of [view] for the .draw attachment. You can also click on the invisible 5 pixel border around the picture to reach the edit mode. Saving a drawing is reflected in RecentChanges.

• Note: the applet is not WikiName sensitive. You need to supply actual (either relative or absolute) URLs as links.

  Note: drawings containing non-ascii characters in their name are not supported currently.

For details on using the drawing applet, see Plugins/TWikiDrawPlugin.