Importing attachments

[acoder2020]

Is it possible to import attachments along with existing data from another issue tracker (via CSV import tool)?

Losing attachments from our 15 years of data will be a barrier. Probably should have thought to ask this before but I was in the weeds with figuring out to get basic ticket data imported.

[cas]

Yes that can be done but you need to use a script to get this done.

[atrol]

The "Import/Export issues" plugins that comes out of the box with MantisBT supports attachments.

[cas]

Some more documentation (or a link to that) would come in handy

[atrol]

Goto page Manage > Plugins
The mentioned plugin is listed in section "Available Plugins".

[cas]

Is there also a description of how the plugin works (there is no accompanying document with the plaugin itself) and how to construct the XML such that they are ready for the import?

[acoder2020]

Yes that can be done but you need to use a script to get this done.

I'm looking into doing this myself. The CSV import plugin does not handle attachments - just ticket data and users.

Is there an API I could use to get a new MantisBT ticket identifier, so I could somehow link the newly created MantisBT ticket with a separate stack of attachments (which do not have any knowledge of MantisBT)?

[acoder2020]

The "Import/Export issues" plugins that comes out of the box with MantisBT supports attachments.

I can't find documentation to support this. The installed plugin section does not link to any docs, and there isn't any info on what the file would look like.

[cas]

I also requested a link to the docs to see how attachments can be handled. let's wait for that.

[acoder2020]

Even in the best case scenario I don't see how more than one attachment per ticket could be done. About half of our tickets with attachments have more than 2 attachments.

Agree, will wait for more enlightenment.

[atrol]

@cas I am not aware that there is an up to date end user documentation, but the original design document (wow, it was written in 2008, the year when I started using MantisBT) should help to understand the concept https://www.mantisbt.org/wiki/doku.php/ ... portexport

Concerning the XML format: There is a DTD in the root folder of the plugin.
Unfortunately it was not updated when attachments wew added  https://www.mantisbt.org/bugs/view.php?id=12013
but it should not be a big deal, as the source code for export/import is not that hard to understand.
Export an issue with a small attachment. I guess you will understand how it works.

@acoder2020 you might also be interested in the MantisBT REST API as one more option how to create issues, see
https://www.mantisbt.org/docs/master/en ... p/#restapi

Not recommend, but the very last chance to get it done: Direct access to the database, see the ERD https://www.mantisbt.org/docs/master/en ... tabase.erd

[acoder2020]

Concerning the XML format: There is a DTD in the root folder of the plugin.
Unfortunately it was not updated when attachments wew added  https://www.mantisbt.org/bugs/view.php?id=12013
but it should not be a big deal, as the source code for export/import is not that hard to understand.
Export an issue with a small attachment. I guess you will understand how it works.

How big of a mountain would it be to ask to have that documentation either updated or expanded? Would that be a "bug" request of some kind?

[acoder2020]

Linking to another thread where someone was apparently able to import an attachment with XML, but they did not provide an example XML file: viewtopic.php?t=24805

[acoder2020]

Wait, where is the XMLImportExport plugin located? It's not listed on the official plugins page:

https://www.mantisbt.org/wiki/doku.php/ ... gins:start

[acoder2020]

@acoder2020 you might also be interested in the MantisBT REST API as one more option how to create issues, see
https://www.mantisbt.org/docs/master/en ... p/#restapi

The documentation for setting up and using REST api in mantis is thin, but I found this guide which helps explain it for everyday end users:

https://www.testingdocs.com/mantisbt-rest-api-guide/