Develop an easier way to include external links in articles' content.

[keithmifsud]

I'll develop an include that takes variables for the anchor's link options.

Update as per #GH-83

• Look into extending Jekyll or the MD processor so that all external links are automatically opened in a new window and have the correct "rel" attribute.

• Develop the feature and run integration tests.

• Bear in mind and check previous posts.

• Remove the include from the previous PR.

• Updated the docs. Possibly just remove the content from the previous PR.

[keithmifsud]

@danielepolencic, In brief, I want to either refactor the URL's once Jekyll has rendered the _site using the post_render hook, meaning the links will already be in html format. Or else, generate the html from markup before Jekyll builds the _site using the (I think) pre_render hook. Both methods will require a condition to check if the host matches the site.url.

I have found this @mentions plugin that I think works the same way I need mine to work. Although, I'm still not sure because ...

This plugin uses the html/pipeline gem and the part of it which handles URLs uses rinku gem. As I understand rinku will process anchor tags but text that matches a URL.

To explain my workflow: I am building a separate Gem in a Ruby Editor (because it helps) and also so that I can TDD and then I'm copying the code inside our site's _plugin directory. I had to run gem install for the dependencies (i.e: rinku and htm/pipeline). Not sure how Netlify handles this. Jekyll required the manual installation.

Please bear in mind that I'm still not sure this way will work due to Rinku. Other options are:

1. Using JS on the client-side
2. Jekyll (liquid) now supports arguments to the url tag such as:

[LINK](http:link.com){:target"_blank"}

Thoughts?

[keithmifsud]

_This is my work in progress:

_The Gem class

require 'jekyll-auto-link/version'
require 'jekyll'
require 'html/pipeline'

module Jekyll
  class AutoLink

    BODY_START_TAG = "<body"
    OPENING_BODY_TAG_REGEX = %r!<body(.*)>\s*!
  
    InvalidJekyllConfig = Class.new(Jekyll::Errors::FatalException)

    class << self
      def linkify(doc)
        content = doc.output
        return unless content.include?('<a')
        src = base_url(doc.site.config)
        if content.include? BODY_START_TAG
          head, opener, tail = content.partition(OPENING_BODY_TAG_REGEX)
          body_content, *rest = tail.partition('</body>')

          processed_markup = filter_with_link(src).call(body_content)[:output].to_s
          doc.output = String.new(head) << opener << processed_markup << rest.join
        end
      end

      def filter_with_link(src)
        filters[src] ||= HTML::Pipeline.new([
            HTML::Pipeline::AutolinkFilter,
        ], {:autolink => true, :link_attr => 'target="_blank"'})
      end

      def filters
        @filters ||= {}
      end

      def base_url(config = {})
        url = config['url']
        case url
        when String
          url.to_s

        else
          raise InvalidJekyllConfig,
                'Site URL is required in config.'

        end
      end
    end
  end
end
Jekyll::Hooks.register %i[pages documents], :post_render do |doc|
  Jekyll::AutoLink.linkify(doc)
end

[keithmifsud]

If I add the code to the _plugins file without the rewuirements at the top I get errors as the HTML::PIpeline is not found. If I just require "html/pipeline", I get an error that Rinku is not found, even though it is not a direct dependency but rather a dependency of "html/pipeline".

In all cases I had to manually install both gems on LearnK8s.

gem install html/pipeline && gem install rinku

[danielepolencic]

I think this article is suggesting that you could simply add a custom converter: http://tbrink.science/blog/2017/04/23/typographic-improvements-for-jekyll-kramdown/

_plugins/open_in_tab.rb:

class Kramdown::Converter::TBHtml < Kramdown::Converter::Html
  def convert_a(el, indent)
    el["target"] = "_blank"
    super(el, indent)
  end
end

class Jekyll::Converters::Markdown
  class KramdownTB < KramdownParser
    def convert(content)
      Kramdown::Document.new(content, @config).to_t_b_html
    end
  end
end

You should add markdown: KramdownTB to your _config.yml. Don't forget to delete your _site folder before you try.