Open "forum-internal" links inside of posts in "target=_self"

chaosbunker

I noticed this when I created a discussion in which I link from the first post to other posts. Every time a link is clicked a new window opens. While this makes sense for external links it would be a good idea to set the target to _self if the domain link to equals the forum domain :-)

zgq354

chaosbunker

clarkwinkelmann I did some research about the rendering logic for days. s9e/TextFormatter's document shows that it use XSLT 1.0 language to transform the XML content into HTML.

Using XPath Function and Conditional Syntax in XSLT can achieve this.

Just 'generate' and replace the template of tag URL.

protected function configureExternalLinks(Configurator $configurator)
{
    // Ignore internal links' target="_blank" in a post
    $baseURL = app()->url();
    $tag = $configurator->tags['URL'];
    $tag->template = <<<EOT
<xsl:choose>
    <xsl:when test="starts-with(@url, '$baseURL')">
        <a href="{@url}"><xsl:copy-of select="@title"/><xsl:apply-templates/></a>
    </xsl:when>
    <xsl:otherwise>
        <a href="{@url}" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><xsl:copy-of select="@title"/><xsl:apply-templates/></a>
    </xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:choose>
EOT;
}

I had tried it on my forum site. Here is the complete change history~

clarkwinkelmann

I believe issue to internal links are not parsed to anything different than external links...

Would _self be enough ? Wouldn't it reload the whole webapp ?

If links get parsed, here would be a few additional suggestions of mine:

Also parse links to specific answers
Give content preview on hover like with the post answers
If the link is not in a markdown or bbcode tag, replace the link text with the discussion title, like on GitHub

chaosbunker

clarkwinkelmann those are great suggestions. You're right, with _self it would reload the whole web app, which is not ideal.

it would be cool, if it worked similar to the reply feature. I am co-opting that feature for my purposes now, but it would be cool if I had control over what the link says, instead of just having the reply arrow and my username..

anyway, thanks for pointing that out to me :-P

Edit:
Actually, on mobile devices clicking on the button with the name that goes to the reply only shows the preview of the reply as it does on desktop when you hover. It does not move the page to the reply onClick. Is that wanted or maybe a bug on mobile devices?
@Toby

clarkwinkelmann

zgq354 thanks for the research. It might not be as relevant as before as we have now switched to opening all links in the same window.

Relevant issues and commits:

flarum/core626
flarum/core859
flarum/core1bdf776

It could be a good addition to @Franz new extension that restores the feature.

zgq354

clarkwinkelmann Thanks for the information. My forum is currently checked out in beta 9 and I haven't noticed this changes here.

Because the rendering process depends on another language abstraction. I think this problem also needs to be raised to that abstract level to slove instead of using preg_match & replace in PHP, to avoid potential bugs .

I'm new to XLST. For me it opens up a new perspective for me when I meet it. @JoshyPHP 's code using <xsl:attribute name="..."> is better than my copying and pasting <a href....> . Learned a lot!