How to check for attachments or limit the number of attachments in SharePoint via jQuery

September 20th, 2011 | Posted by Marijn in jquery / javascript | sharepoint

A client had a business requirement that if someone added an attachment to an item in a list, a metadata field had to be filled in. So I put on my jQuery glasses (they are quite special, looking a bit like Dame Ednas) I ended up with following code which uses the PreSaveAction, a default function that runs every time you hit the ok button:

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function PreSaveAction() { // we create a counter and we go through the fileupload to check how many there are var count = 0; $("input[name^='fileupload']").each(function(){ if ($(this).val() != ""){ count++; } }); // Then we check if the mandatory field is empty and if we have attachments if ($(":select[title=Contact means]").val() == ) { if (count > 0){ alert("Please fill the field if you have uploaded an attachment"); return false; } } //if the field was not empty or we have no attachments, //we dont go into the if loop and we can go ahead and save the item Return true; }</pre>

This code could also be used to limit the number of attachments a user can add. That code would be:

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function PreSaveAction() { // we create a counter and we go through the fileupload to check how many there are var count = 0; $("input[name^='fileupload']").each(function(){ if ($(this).val() != ""){ count++; } }); // Then we check there are more then 10 attachments if (count > 10){ alert("Please limit to 10 attachments"); return false; } // if we have less then 10 items, we can just continue Return true; }

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Dont forget to add the jquery library reference!