Question

How do you permanently delete items in the Trash web?

Environment

-- ThomasDaly - 21 Jun 2006

Answer

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Currently there isn't any way, other than deleting them from the shell. Currently the feeling among many (but not me) is that there should be no way to empty the trash.

-- MeredithLesly - 21 Jun 2006

Possibly an idea for a plugin or addon to handle this usecase. Thomas, you could try to raise interest in the Plugin web for starters?

-- SteffenPoulsen - 23 Jun 2006

Can't be done in a plugin, at least not without violating API policy.

-- MeredithLesly - 23 Jun 2006

Thanks Meredith and Steffen. I'm with you Meredith - I think it's important that at least the administrator should be able to empty the trash. Otherwise you have a mountain of rubbish that grows to infinity!

-- ThomasDaly - 29 Jun 2006

We have a cronjob that deletes the data/Trash and /pub/Trash and creates a new /data/Trash folder from a _default_Trash folder that already contains a TrashAttachment-Topic.

-- CedricWeber - 29 Jun 2006

I think Cedric's solution is something many would find useful.

Cedric: could you make an AddOnPackage for your cron script? It would contain the _default_Trash folder, as well as a topic that shows the command/scriptfor the cron job. I believe TWikiAddOns has more information on creating add on packages.

-- JasonHill - 29 Jun 2006

We need to completely delete documents (i.e., empty the Trash). That's the entire reason why we're switching from our current wiki engine to Twiki. It's for document retention policy purposes (meaning, we have to be able to completely get rid of documents that we no longer need).

Was this add-on ever made?

-- GabeHeafitz - 22 Feb 2008

Did anyone get this cronjob that can be shared?

-- DonFoust - 2011-08-25

Not that I am aware of. TWiki is open source software, where it is good to take and contribute. You could hire one of the TWikiConsultants to write an add-on to empty the trash.

-- PeterThoeny - 2011-08-26

For TWiki administrators, this feature should be absolutely essential and is something I need.

If the only way is through an add on package, rather than included in a release, then let's provide it to the community.

I'm willing to work on this, time permitting. How it gets implemented is the question.

I am using TWiki-5.1.0 on Debian Linux 6.0.3 (Squeeze) with Perl v5.10.1.

Since TWiki is Perl-based, it should be written in this language to support cross-platform installations and provide the most interoperability. I don't have any guidelines for TWiki compatible Perl scripting, so if there are any, please provide some references, otherwise I can work out an initial implementation for review and we can go from there.

Probably the biggest security concern is that this will remove files directly from the file system, which is probably why so many people decided not to implement this. To safeguard the file system, probably the easiest thing to do is to hard-code the location of trash attachments so it can only remove files from there.

That's my initial cut at it. Please review and let me know what you think. Any pointers are appreciated. Thanks.

-- SergeiHaramundanis - 2011-11-27

Thank you Sergei for the offer to work on this. This is best implemented as a plugin. We have a proposed spec at EmptyTrash. Please add your thoughts there.

See Plugins.ReadmeFirst to learn how to get involved with plugin development.

-- PeterThoeny - 2011-11-27