1 I thought I'd draw attention to a desire of mine for **ikiwiki**. I'm no power-user, and mostly I do fairly simple stuff with my [wiki](http://kitenet.net/~kyle/family/wiki).
3 However, I would like the ability (now) to **rename/move/delete** pages. As part of having a genealogy wiki, I've put name and dates of birth/death as part of the title of each article (so to avoid cases where people have the same name, but are children/cousins/etc of others with that name). However, some of this information changes. For instance, I didn't know a date of death and now I do, or I had it wrong originally, or it turns out someone is still alive I didn't know about. All of these cases leave me with bad article titles.
5 So, I can go ahead and move the file to a new page with the correct info, orphan that page, provide a link for the new page if desired, and otherwise ignore that page. But then, it clutters up the wiki and serves no useful purpose.
7 Anyway to consider implementing **rename/move/delete** ? I certainly lack the skills to appreciate what this would entail, but feel free to comment if it appears impossible, and then I'll go back to the aforementioned workaround. I would prefer simple rename, however.
9 Thanks again to [Joey](http://kitenet.net/~joey) for putting ikiwiki together. I love the program.
11 *[Kyle](http://kitenet.net/~kyle/)=*
13 > Took a bit too long, but [[done]] now. --[[Joey]]
17 The MediaWiki moving/renaming mechanism is pretty nice. It's easy to get a list of pages that point to the current page. When renaming a page it sticks a forwarding page in the original place. The larger the size of the wiki the more important organization tools become.
21 * a new type of file to represent a forwarding page
22 * a rename tool that can
23 * move the existing page to the new name
24 * optionally drop a forwarding page
25 * optionally rewrite incoming links to the new location
29 > This could be implemented through the use of an HTTP redirect to the
30 > new page, but this has the downside that people may not know they're being
33 > This could also be implemented using a combination of raw inline and meta
34 > to change the title (add a "redirected from etc." page. This could be done
35 > with a plugin. A redirect page would be [[!redirect page="newpage"]].
36 > But then if you click "edit" on this redirect page, you won't be able
37 > to edit the new page, only the call to redirect.
42 I'm going to try to run through a full analysis and design for moving and
43 deleting pages here. I want to make sure all cases are covered. --[[Joey]]
47 The UI I envision is to add "Rename" and "Delete" buttons to the file edit
48 page. Both next to the Save button, and also at the bottom of the attachment
51 The attachment(s) to rename or delete would be selected using the check boxes
52 and then the button applies to all of them. Deleting multiple attachments
53 in one go is fine; renaming multiple attachments in one go is ambiguous,
54 and it can just error out if more than one is selected for rename.
55 (Alternatively, it could allow moving them all to a different subdirectory.)
57 The Delete buttons lead to a page to confirm the deletion(s).
59 The Rename buttons lead to a page with a text edit box for editing the
60 page name. The title of the page is edited, not the actual filename.
62 There will also be a optional comment field, so a commit message can be
63 written for the rename/delete.
65 Note that there's an edge case concerning pages that have a "/" encoded
66 as part of their title. There's no way for a title edit box to
67 differentiate between that, and a "/" that is instended to refer to a
68 subdirectory to move the page to. Consequence is that "/" will always be
69 treated literally, as a subdir separator; it will not be possible to use
70 this interface to put an encoded "/" in a page's name.
72 Once a page is renamed, ikiwiki will return to the page edit interface,
73 now for the renamed page. Any modifications that the user had made to the
74 textarea will be preserved.
76 Similarly, when an attachment is renamed, or deleted, return to the page
77 edit interface (with the attachments displayed).
79 When a page is deleted, redirect the user to the toplevel index.
81 Note that this design, particularly the return to the edit interface after
82 rename, means that the rename button can *only* be put on the page edit ui.
83 It won't be possible to put it on the action bar or somewhere else. (It
84 would be possible to code up a different rename button that doesn't do
85 that, and use it elsewhere.)
87 Hmm, unless it saves the edit state and reloads it later, while using a separate
88 form. Which seems to solve other problems, so I think is the way to go.
92 When renaming `foo`, it probably makes sense to also rename
93 `foo/Discussion`. Should other SubPages in `foo/` also be renamed? I think
94 it's probably simplest to rename all of its SubPages too.
96 (For values of "simplest" that don't include the pain of dealing with all
97 the changed links on subpages.. as well as issues like pagespecs that
98 continue to match the old subpages, and cannot reasonably be auto-converted
99 to use the new, etc, etc... So still undecided about this.)
101 When deleting `foo`, I don't think SubPages should be deleted. The
102 potential for mistakes and abuse is too large. Deleting Discussion page
103 might be a useful exception.
105 TODO: Currently, subpages are not addressed.
109 When renaming a page, it's desirable to keep links that point to it
110 working. Rather than use redirection pages, I think that all pages that
111 link to it should be modified to fix their links.
113 The rename plugin can add a "rename" hook, which other plugins can use to
114 update links &etc. The hook would be passed page content, the old and new
115 link names, and would modify the content and return it. At least the link
116 plugin should have such a hook.
118 After calling the "rename" hook, and rendering the wiki, the rename plugin
119 can check to see what links remain pointing to the old page. There could
120 still be some, for example, CamelCase links probably won't be changed; img
121 plugins and others contain logical links to the file, etc. The user can be
122 presented with a list of all the pages that still have links to the old
123 page, and can manually deal with them.
125 In some cases, a redirection page will be wanted, to keep long-lived urls
126 working. Since the meta plugin supports creating such pages, and since they
127 won't always be needed, I think it will be simplest to just leave it up to
128 the user to create such a redirection page after renaming a page.
130 ## who can delete/rename what?
132 The source page must be editable by the user to be deleted/renamed.
133 When renaming, the dest page must not already exist, and must be creatable
136 lWhen deleting/renaming attachments, the `allowed_attachments` PageSpec
141 Three new functions are added to the RCS interface:
144 * `rcs_rename(old, new)`
145 * `rcs_commit_staged(message, user, ip)`
147 See [[rcs_updates_needed_for_rename_and_remove]].
153 * Alice clicks "delete" button for a page; Bob makes a modification;
154 Alice confirms deletion. Ideally in this case, Alice should get an error
155 message that there's a conflict.
156 Update: In my current code, alice's deletion will fail if the file was
157 moved or deleted in the meantime; if the file was modified since alice
158 clicked on the delete button, the modifications will be deleted too. I
159 think this is acceptable.
160 * Alice opens edit UI for a page; Bob makes a modification; Alice
161 clicks delete button and confirms deletion. Again here, Alice should get
162 a conflict error. Note that this means that the rcstoken should be
163 recorded when the edit UI is first opened, not when the delete button is
165 Update: Again here, there's no conflict, but the delete succeeds. Again,
166 basically acceptible.
167 * Alice and Bob both try to delete a page at the same time. It's fine for
168 the second one to get a message that it no longer exists. Or just to
169 silently fail to delete the deleted page..
170 Update: It will display an error to the second one that the page doesn't
172 * Alice deletes a page; Bob had edit window open for it, and saves
173 it afterwards. I think that Bob should win in this case; Alice can always
174 notice the page has been added back, and delete it again.
176 * Alice clicks "rename" button for a page; Bob makes a modification;
177 Alice confirms rename. This case seems easy, it should just rename the
180 * Alice opens edit UI for a page; Bob makes a modification; Alice
181 clicks rename button and confirms rename. Seems same as previous case.
183 * Alice and Bob both try to rename a page at the same time (to probably
184 different names). Or one tries to delete, and the other to rename.
185 I think it's acceptible for the second one to get an error message that
186 the page no longer exists.
187 Update: check, that happens
188 * Alice renames a page; Bob had edit window open for it, and saves
189 it afterwards, under old name. I think it's acceptible for Bob to succeed
190 in saving it under the old name in this case, though not ideal.
191 Update: Behavior is the same as if Alice renamed the page and Bob created
192 a new page with the old name. Seems acceptable, though could be mildly
193 confusing to Bob (or Alice).
194 * Alice starts creating a new page. In the meantime, Bob renames a
195 different page to that name. Alice should get an error message when
196 committing; and it should have conflict markers. Ie, this should work the
197 same as if Bob had edited the new page at the same time as Alice did.
198 Update: That should happen. Haven't tested this case yet to make sure.
199 * Bob starts renaming a page. In the meantime, Alice creates a new page
200 with the name he's renaming it to. Here Bob should get a error message
201 that he can't rename the page to an existing name. (A conflict resolution
202 edit would also be ok.)
203 Update: Bob gets an error message.
204 * Alice renames (or deletes) a page. In the meantime, Bob is uploading an
205 attachment to it, and finishes after the rename finishes. Is it
206 acceptible for the attachment to be saved under the old name?
207 Update: Meh. It's certianly not ideal; if Bob tries to save the page he
208 uploaded the attachment to, he'll get a message about it having been
209 deleted/renamed, and he can try to figure out what to do... :-/
210 * I don't know if this is a conflict, but it is an important case to consider;
211 you need to make sure that there are no security holes. You dont want
212 someone to be able to rename something to <code>/etc/passwd</code>.
213 I think it would be enough that you cannot rename to a location outside
214 of srcdir, you cannot rename to a location that you wouldn't be able
215 to edit because it is locked, and you cannot rename to an existing page.
217 > Well, there are a few more cases (like not renaming to a pruned
218 > filename, and not renaming _from_ a file that is not a known source
219 > file or is locked), but yes, that's essentially it.
221 > PS, the first thing I do to any
222 > web form is type /etc/passwd and ../../../../etc/passwd into it. ;-) --[[Joey]]