Constant save/delete when creating draw.io powerup

[troywray]

Want to create a UML diagram, draw.io power up seems ideal

Create card - new power up - draw.io

Start creating the diagram and at the bottom, the status cycles flashing (perhaps) saving / deleting

In trello, the card has hundreds of comments ... I deleted xyz

So I tried linking draw.io to Google Drive, created a diagram on drive, created new card, added draw.io power up, add attachment, find saved drawing -> load

Error message saying not a valid document.

What **is** the right way to use draw.io in this case?

[Mohamed Mohamedin · Accepted solution]

The first method is the correct method. The drawback of this method is the long list of activities which is due to updating the attachment by deleting the old version and adding the new one.

The workaround is to create the diagram on diagrams.net, download it (a *.drawio file), then attach it to the card. Automatically, this new attachment will show up in "draw.io Diagrams" section

[troywray]

thanks for the reply

It's not just deleting the old every 15s or so, it's like every second. And my second option was exactly what you suggest, Google recognises it as a draw.io diagram and sends me to the editor,  but attach it to a card and then try and edit and it won't. It (the draw.io editor) says error- not a diagram file.

[Mohamed Mohamedin]

The file is saved with every change made to the diagram. We cannot disable this behavior as in Trello, we are not notified when the dialog is closed. Hence, without this behavior, there is a risk of losing all you edits when the dialog is closed accidentally.

How did you download the file from Google Drive? I tried Download from Google Drive as well as export to XML from draw.io and both work.

Also, what is the extension of the file?

[troywray]

The extension is .drawio and if I double click on it in drive, it opens fine in diagrams.net

Ok, so here's my card in trello showing "use cases.session.drawio"

https://www.screencast.com/t/B7JA6Fo4vmPF

The file exists, works in diagrams.net.

If I click download, it actually opens a new tab:

https://www.screencast.com/t/SYqUUwkIv4o

Open with diagrams.net, and if I make changes there and save, come back to trello, click the download link again, I get the options to open with diagrams.net and (of course) the changes are there.

That's great, but Trello is playing no part in what goes on, I may just have well pasted a direct link to the file in the card. In fact I tried that, it works just the same, it opens the same page as the middle link.

But if I click edit in the card, I get:

https://www.screencast.com/t/XJMg2ZPFAYDa

I changed the filename to use.drawio (it's an xml file btw), in case it didn't like the space, that made no difference.

If I export as XML, direct to Trello it shows me a list of cards from a 'random' board to insert it, I didn't get a choice. When I did and found the board it inserted it on, it was just an xml file, not recognised as drawing.

In this screenshot, you'll see two drawio files. One, test, I used the create from the power up - that works fine and the edit link works as expected.

https://www.screencast.com/t/lajGnnuHNP

You'll see I also imported an exported xml, but it doesn't recognise that either.

Please show me the exact steps you used to say it works fine for you. I.e. you have a drawings.net file with extension drawio and you can import that into a card such that it then edits as intended. Then I can tell you whether that works for me or not.

summary it only works if you create the file from within trello. That's not great!

Thanks for your patience.

BTW, I'm a progammer, I'm not dumb with Google Drive etc. I seem to have tried all workflows to be able to link to an existing file.

[Mohamed Mohamedin]

I got it now. Unfortunately, we don't support direct attachments from Google Drive or other services. Only, file attachments are supported currently. What I tried before is editing the file online then upload it to Trello as a file.

Please follow this issue on Github:

https://github.com/jgraph/drawio/issues/844 

[troywray]

ok, commented in Github. Seems like there would be a quicker interim solution of not expecting to be able to add a drawio file as an attachment, that's quite a different workflow.

But to be able to specify an existing file instead of just create new when you click on the drawio powerup would seem simple to implement.