Re-using attachments?

[cheesegrits]

Apologies if this is a dumb question, but it's been bugging me for a while!

Is there any way users can "re-use" attachments from previous posts? In other words, say they have already uploaded an image, or a ZIP, or some such in a previous post. Now they want to show that attachment, or link to it in some way, in another post.

I've tried various approaches, but nothing seems to work. As far as I can see, any given attachment can only be displayed in the post it was uploaded in. This seems somewhat restrictive, and I feel sure I must be missing something obvious!!

-- hugh

[Andy]

Your not overlooking anything, it's working as designed. The problem with allowing one to reuse attachments is when the original post is deleted, attachments are tied to the original post and if it is deleted it will make any other posts using that attachment have a missing image.

vBulletin needs to change the way attachements are managed so that they are not tied to an individual post and or user, that way each occurrence of an attachment could be tracked and only if there are no posts using the attachment would the attachment be deleted. This would only work if the admin does not care about attachment quotas and I suspect most do not.

Also attachments should be treated more like [img] tags, that is each attachment would have a [attach] bbcode inserted at the time of the post. That way attachments would be quoted much the same way [img] tags are.

[Adrian Schneider]

I agree.

I would really like to see it more flexible and completely built away from the post system. This would allow you to attach things to private messages, or any other new functionality added by upgrades or modfiications.

If they were to build it in such a way where you could have a sub attachment class for posts, that would really make it easier for modification developers!

One minor solution to make the images work is to use a new bbcode such as "attach_img" where the HTML replacement would be something like '<img src="attachment.php?attachmentid={param}" alt="" />' ... not perfect, but it should get the basic job done for people who know about it.

[cheesegrits]

I am so glad I wasn't imagining things. I can see why attachments were originally designed this way, I'm sure the original developers didn't foresee the huge array of mods and bolt-ons that vB would spawn that might want to share attachments. But it really does seem like something that badly needs an overhaul soon.

A (relatively) simple start would seem to be to modify the post / attachment deletion, so it does some basic reference count based garbage collection, rather than a simple minded delete. That would at least enable sharing of attachments between posts, and let us safely create some bbcodes and associated mods for referencing attachments without them disappearing from underneath us.

Obviously Adrian's and Andy's suggestions are the way to go in the long run, i.e. a complete redesign that implements attachments as their own class, available to developers so we can share attachments between apps. But in the short term, I just want to be able to see all of my posted attachments to date when I hit that paper-clip icon, and be able to place them in new posts, without worrying about the attachment vanishing because the original post was deleted.

-- hugh

[bchertov]

... But in the short term, I just want to be able to see all of my posted attachments to date when I hit that paper-clip icon, and be able to place them in new posts, without worrying about the attachment vanishing because the original post was deleted.

-- hugh

This is exactly what I want! Have you (or anybody else) done this?