Has anybody thought about implementing a command to upload a URL into the content area of a twiki web page?

The command would import the html data from another web into a twiki web before decomissioning the other web page. I am thinking of something along the lines of an

   % INCLUDE{"http://192.12.10.5/notes20010102"}%

That replaces the %INCLUDE...% with the downloaded contents of the URL. I can't just put in a URL or an include because the site serving the information will be temporary.

Purpose: I am looking at using elog as an offline data gathering mechanism for our field personnel. When they come back into the office, they would upload their log pages into a twiki web and then delete it from their computers.

-- JohnRouillard - 23 Nov 2001

one idea that we had was that we should have a caching system for external INCLUDEs - that way you continue to use the existing INCLUDE syntax, but we chould use a plugin to save the INCLUDED content on the server, and then only go out every now and then to ensure updates (and if we use the TWikiStore to save the INCLUDed pages we'd have a versioned set of pages backed up.

-- SvenDowideit - 21 Apr 2005

VarCachePlugin can handle caching of the information as is. I've also been considering how to store information from dynamic content providers like %INCLUDE%, see HowToSnapshotRenderedPages. I believe implementation as a plugin is an OK idea, I hope I can give the idea a bit of work when time allows.

As of Johns idea I believe a plugin that handles an %IMPORT% tag or the like could be constructed. Special consideration will have to be taken regarding formatting of input, not to clutter up the pages - perhaps something like the strategy that MsOfficeAttachmentsAsHTMLPlugin is using could be a nice way of handling the external content.

-- SteffenPoulsen - 21 Apr 2005