SID-02239: Is it possible to update draw.io diagrams from tWiki Pages

Status:	Asked	TWiki version:	4.3.2	Perl version:
Category:	CategoryPlugins	Server OS:		Last update:	9 years ago

First off congratulations on a great product. I work in a software development team that relies heavily on tWiki for information sharing, and I find it a great time-saver.

As part of our work here, we routinely embed draw.io diagrams and process maps on tWiki pages for distribution and collaboration. (http://www.draw.io is an Atlassian product)

However, I'm routinely given feedback that the process of maintaining and collaborating on draw.io diagrams in tWiki could be easier. Particularly if there was closer integration between the two tools.

For info, right now we save the xml and generated image as attachments to the tWiki page, and then display the finished image. If you want to edit the diagram you detach the xml. open it in draw.io, update the xml & image and then update the attached xml and image on the wiki page... it seems like we could do this better, but with limited time we haven't looked into it yet, so I thought I would ask the experts first!

Are you guys aware of any tWiki Plugins to allow draw.io diagrams to be edited inside a tWiki page? Or can you offer any advice on how to remove some of those manual steps to integrate draw.io closer with tWiki?

All advice will be much appreciated.

Regards, Paddy Corry, Software Developer, FriendsFirst Life Assurance, Dublin, Ireland, Email: paddy.corry@friendsfirstPLEASENOSPAM.ie

-- TWiki Guest - 2016-08-10

Discussion and Answer

It looks like draw.io saves files in a custom xml file. You could create a new plugin to integrate draw.io with TWiki. It could be modeled after the (outdated) TWikiDrawPlugin. That plugin saves 2-3 files: A proprietary .draw, a .gif for embedded image representation, and optionally a .map for an image map. I have not looked into details, but in your case you would need to:

• On edit: Supply the .xml file to the draw.io website for edit
• On save: Attach the updated .xml file to the TWiki topic, generate a .png and attach that too.

The while process should be automated, e.g. just click to launch and edit, then click save to generate and attach the files. Maybe draw.io has a REST API for that?

-- Peter Thoeny - 2016-08-11

It looks like draw.io is based on the mxGraph JavaScript library, https://www.jgraph.com/javascript-graph-visualization-library.html. So another option is to do the whole authoring in a TWiki plugin that embeds this library. This approach would be more similar to how the TWikiDrawPlugin works.

-- Peter Thoeny - 2016-08-11

You could follow the approach taken by a number of plugins to draw.io, described in https://support.draw.io/display/DO/2015/09/21/Simple+draw.io+embedding+walk-through.

-- David Benson - 2016-09-05

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