David Simpson

…or how to display attachments in an unordered list.

Something that bugs me in Confluence is the way that attachments are shown. The default view is a big table with just about all the information related to each attachment.

This is great if you want all this detail, but I’m a simple soul with simple needs.

Krug suggested “Omit needless words”. In this case, it’s more of “Omit needless metadata”.

Less is more

Enter {list-attachments} – a user macro that dispenses with the excess. It displays an unordered list with the filename, file size and last modified date. If there’s a comment for the attachment, this is displayed in the link text rather than the filename.

This is a really straightforward view of the attachments on the page.

How do I install {list-attachments} ?

It’s pretty easy. As a Confluence administrator, go to Confluence Admin | User Macros and click on Create a User Macro.

Macro name: list-attachments

Template:

## MACRO: list-attachments
## View page attachments in a simple list
## USAGE: {list-attachments}

#set ($attachmentsList = $content.getLatestVersionsOfAttachments())

#applyDecorator("page")
    <div class="listAttachmentsDiv">
        #if ($attachmentsList.size() > 0)
			<ul>
		        #foreach( $attachment in $attachmentsList )
					<li>

						## Display the file type icon:
			            <a name="$generalUtil.htmlEncode($generalUtil.urlEncode($page.title))-attachment-$generalUtil.htmlEncode($generalUtil.urlEncode($attachment.fileName))">#parse ("/pages/includes/attachment_icon.vm")</a> 

						## The link:
						#if ($attachment.comment && $attachment.comment.trim().length() > 0)
							## Display the comment as the link text instead of the filename
							<a href="$generalUtil.htmlEncode("${req.contextPath}${attachment.downloadPathWithoutVersion}")">$generalUtil.htmlEncode($attachment.comment)</a>
						#else
							## Display the filename as the link text
							<a href="$generalUtil.htmlEncode("${req.contextPath}${attachment.downloadPathWithoutVersion}")">$generalUtil.htmlEncode($attachment.fileName)</a>
						#end

    					## Display the file size:
						<span class="fileSize">$attachment.niceFileSize</span>

						## Display the last modification date
						<span class="lastModDate">$attachment.lastModificationDate</span>
					</li>
				#end
			</ul>
		#else
			## Display nothing
		#end
    </div>
#end

Accept the defaults for the other fields, then click on Save

To call the macro in the page type: {list-attachments}

The result:

For extra points

If you want to change the way the items are displayed, add some CSS to the global stylesheet, e.g

.listAttachmentsDiv a { font-family: helvetica, sans-serif; }
.fileSize, .lastModDate { font-size: 90%; color: #999;}

To see even less, comment out (add ## at the start of the line) lines 27 & 30 in the user macro to remove the file size and last modification date.

Now you’re left with a simple list of links.