1# Delete Page Guard for DokuWiki 2 3The **Delete Page Guard** plugin prevents accidental or intentional deletion of 4wikipages in your DokuWiki installation by blocking the “empty save” 5operation when certain pages are protected. A page is considered for 6protection when its ID or relative file path matches one or more 7regular expressions configured via the DokuWiki Configuration Manager. 8 9## Features 10 11* Prevents deletion via “empty save” on protected pages. 12* Supports any number of protection patterns using PCRE syntax. 13* Choose whether to match against the colon‑separated page ID or the 14 relative file system path. 15* Allow administrators and optional additional groups to bypass the 16 protection. 17* Optionally treat whitespace‑only content as empty. 18 19## Installation 20 211. Copy the contents of this plugin directory into 22 `<dokuwiki>/lib/plugins/deletepageguard/`. 232. Ensure that the directory name matches the `base` value in 24 `plugin.info.txt` (here: `deletepageguard`). 253. Visit the **Configuration Manager** in your DokuWiki and adjust the 26 plugin settings under the “Delete Page Guard” section. 27 28## Configuration 29 30The following options are available in the Configuration Manager: 31 32| Setting | Description | 33|---|---| 34| **Protected page patterns** | List of PCRE regular expressions. Each line defines a pattern. When a page matches any pattern, non‑admin users cannot delete it by empty save. | 35| **Match against** | Choose whether the patterns should match against the page ID (e.g. `users:john:home`) or the relative file path (e.g. `users/john/home.txt`). | 36| **Extra groups allowed to delete** | Comma separated list of user groups that are allowed to delete protected pages, in addition to administrators. Leave empty to restrict deletion to admins only. | 37| **Treat whitespace‑only pages as empty** | If enabled, pages containing only whitespace will be treated as empty and deletion will be blocked on protected pages. | 38 39### Pattern examples 40 41* `^users:` – protect all pages in the `users` namespace. 42* `^users:[^:]+:start$` – protect every user’s landing page named `start` under `users:<username>`. | 43* `^projects:.*$` – protect everything in the `projects` namespace. | 44* `^private/.*\.txt$` – when matching against file paths, protect any `.txt` file in the `private` directory. | 45 46## How it works 47 48When a page is saved, DokuWiki triggers the 49`COMMON_WIKIPAGE_SAVE` event just before writing to disk. For normal 50edits, the plugin does nothing. However, when the new content is 51empty (after optional trimming) the plugin checks the configured 52patterns against the chosen target (ID or file path). If a match 53occurs and the current user is not an administrator and not in one of 54the exempt groups, the plugin prevents the deletion by calling 55`$event->preventDefault()` and `$event->stopPropagation()` as 56documented in DokuWiki’s event system【147016890842581†L304-L335】. An error message is displayed to 57the user informing them that deletion is not allowed. 58 59## Compatibility 60 61This plugin hooks into the `COMMON_WIKIPAGE_SAVE` event, which was 62introduced in DokuWiki release **“Detritus” (2016‑02‑24)** and is 63marked as preventable【699486104488352†L111-L139】. It has been tested for compatibility with 64current releases such as **Kaos 2024‑02‑06b** and **Librarian 2025‑05‑14**. 65The plugin uses only public APIs and the documented event system, 66so it should continue to work with future versions as long as these 67events remain available. 68 69## License 70 71This plugin is released under the terms of the 72[GNU General Public License v2](https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html).