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TYPO3 v6 has reached its end-of-life April 18th, 2017 and is not maintained by the community anymore. Looking for a stable version? Use the version switch on the top left.

There is no further ELTS support. It is strongly recommended updating your project.

Accessing the clipboard

You can easily access the internal clipboard in TYPO3 from your backend modules:

/** @var $clipboard \TYPO3\CMS\Backend\Clipboard\Clipboard */
$clipboard = \TYPO3\CMS\Core\Utility\GeneralUtility::makeInstance('TYPO3\\CMS\\Backend\\Clipboard\\Clipboard');
// Read the clipboard content from the user session
$clipboard->initializeClipboard();
\TYPO3\CMS\Core\Utility\DebugUtility::debug($clipboard->clipData);

In this simple piece of code we instantiate a clipboard object and make it load its content. We then simply dump this content into the BE module's debug window, with the following result:

Clipboard dump

A dump of the clipboard in the debug window

This tells us what objects are registered on the default tab ("normal") (a content element with id 216 in "copy" mode) and the numeric tabs (which can each contain more than one element). It also tells us that the current tab is number 2. We can compare with the BE view of the clipboard:

Clipboard content

The clipboard as seen in the BE

which indeed contains two files.

Clipboard content should not be accessed directly, but using the elFromTable() method of the clipboard object:

// Access files and pages content of current pad
$currentPad = array(
        'files' => $clipboard->elFromTable('_FILE'),
        'pages' => $clipboard->elFromTable('pages'),
);

// Switch to normal pad and retrieve files and pages content
$clipboard->setCurrentPad('normal');
$normalPad = array(
        'files' => $clipboard->elFromTable('_FILE'),
        'pages' => $clipboard->elFromTable('pages'),
);

Here we first try to get all files and then all page records on the current pad (which is pad 2). Then we change to the "Normal" pad, call the elFromTable() method again.

In the "examples" extension, this data is passed to a BE module view for display, which is really just information:

Clipboard items

Display of information about individual clipboard items

Putting elements into the clipboard

This is too complicated to describe in detail. The following codelisting is from the Web > List module where selections for the clipboard are posted from a form and registered:

// Clipboard is initialized:
// Start clipboard
$dblist->clipObj = \TYPO3\CMS\Core\Utility\GeneralUtility::makeInstance('TYPO3\\CMS\\Backend\\Clipboard\\Clipboard');
// Initialize - reads the clipboard content from the user session
$dblist->clipObj->initializeClipboard();
// Clipboard actions are handled:
// CB is the clipboard command array
$CB = \TYPO3\CMS\Core\Utility\GeneralUtility::_GET('CB');
if ($this->cmd == 'setCB') {
        // CBH is all the fields selected for the clipboard, CBC is the checkbox fields which were checked.
        // By merging we get a full array of checked/unchecked elements
        // This is set to the 'el' array of the CB after being parsed so only the table in question is registered.
        $CB['el'] = $dblist->clipObj->cleanUpCBC(array_merge((array) \TYPO3\CMS\Core\Utility\GeneralUtility::_POST('CBH'), (array) \TYPO3\CMS\Core\Utility\GeneralUtility::_POST('CBC')), $this->cmd_table);
}
if (!$this->MOD_SETTINGS['clipBoard']) {
        // If the clipboard is NOT shown, set the pad to 'normal'.
        $CB['setP'] = 'normal';
}
// Execute commands.
$dblist->clipObj->setCmd($CB);
// Clean up pad
$dblist->clipObj->cleanCurrent();
// Save the clipboard content
$dblist->clipObj->endClipboard();