Linkify Words

sam · March 5, 2018, 7:16am


	Summary	Linkify Words allows you to automatically hyperlink certain words or patterns in your post with desired destination URL.
	Repository Link	https://github.com/discourse/discourse-linkify-words
	New to Discourse Themes?	Beginner’s guide to using Discourse Themes

Install this theme component

NOTE BEFORE INSTALLING

Discourse has a built in feature called Watched Words which can replicate most of the features of this theme component. Considering using that before installing this theme component. You can find Watched Words in the Admin menu under Customize → Watched Words

How to configure?

After importing the theme component, configure the theme settings with the format

WORD, https://destination.url.com

or using regular expressions (in JavaScript implementation) with the format

/regex/, https://destination.url.com

One item per line

Using regular expressions

With regular expressions, you can match a certain pattern to a single URL. This is useful for synonyms or for words which can take different forms in the sentence etc.

However, you can also generate the URL automatically based on what was matched. For example, let’s say you have a line of products, each with its own numeric id, and you want to autolink them to their own URLs. Using

/product-([0-9]+)/, https://myshop.com/product/$1

product-42 will be autolinked to https://myshop.com/product/42
Notice the capturing parentheses in the regular expression and the $1 in the URL which is substituted by the match inside the parenthesis. You can also capture multiple parts of the string and use $2, $3 and so on.

Regular expressions are by default case sensitive (unlike WORD’s which are case insensitive). However, you can change that by using a standard “i” modfier like this:

/foo/i, https://example.com

In this case, FOO, Foo or foo will all be matched.

Limitations

Replacement will only appear in the web UI and will not appear in emails.

How this looks in action?

Credits

Big thanks to @Osama for building theme settings and Javascript Bookmarklet to replace text with a link - Stack Overflow for guiding on the implementation.

8BIT · March 5, 2018, 3:01pm

fantastic, system-wide feature… was thinking about this just the other day!

fellowshipforums · March 6, 2018, 3:45am

Hi

First off, I’d just like to thank everyone for all the help provided to me over the past few weeks. I know I’ve been asking lots of questions - I am also a beginner to Discourse and coding in general, and the community here has been incredible.

I am wondering if it would be possible to add on a feature to this, which is very similar in nature. I think most of the functionality is built, my use case for this is slightly different however.

Would it be possible to have a box like this on a ‘Tags’ page, where the user can type in specific tag words manually, and it would create a customized url based on these words? For example, the image below would produce a url something like this: www.websitename.com/tags/■■■■■/■■■■■/■■■■■. This would be a great feature for Tags Intersection, and would allow the user to specify the words in their intersection.

Thanks.

8BIT · March 7, 2018, 6:36pm

seems to be not showing when you add it to a theme:

21%20AM

tried adding to default… but doesn’t seem to be working as intended:

Dax · March 7, 2018, 6:45pm

It is not a problem related to this specific theme, see:

https://meta.discourse.org/t/js-error-on-click-adding-a-theme-component/82313

Southpaw · March 8, 2018, 4:41am

Sometimes one like is not enough. Office high-fives took place today as we thought through all the ways we could put this to use!

One question, though: Is the following a bug?

Most of my links are working, however urls that include appended parameters are failing.

For example, I want to use this link:
https://republicwireless.com/shop/phones/moto-x4/?icid=phones-cta-forums-moto-x4-post

but when it is created from linkified words, clicking it results in:
https://forums.republicwireless.com/clicks/track?url=%20https%3A%2F%2Frepublicwireless.com%2Fshop%2Fphones%2Fmoto-x4%2F%3Ficid%3Dphones-cta-forums-moto-x4-post&post_id=134361&topic_id=16863

The same link added to a post traditionally (pasted, or using the “link” icon from the toolbar) works.

sam · March 8, 2018, 4:46am

Looks like @zogstrip fixed this https://github.com/discourse/discourse-linkify-words/commit/ef072b380b81698d5d21811e2e2e723310fe058c … I just updated your component, can your refresh the problem page and try again?

Southpaw · March 8, 2018, 4:48am

That appears to have fixed it! Thank you!!

sam · March 8, 2018, 4:49am

Keep in mind, we are going to elevate this to a proper feature in Discourse in the “special actions on words” section, but it will take a bit.

I love that this is a component though cause we get to “test out components” in anger. @Osama / @joffreyjaffeux one huge omission we have here is that it is ultra mega super painful working with long lists in settings, try this out with 50 or so links to experience the pain. We need a different “list” control for managing long lists of things.

joffreyjaffeux · March 8, 2018, 6:58am

do you have any idea in mind about this?

sam · March 8, 2018, 8:56am

Honestly, I am not sure, but have a look at republic for an example of how painful this gets.

joffreyjaffeux · March 8, 2018, 9:19am

Agreed it’s a massive pain…

A first step would be to give it more width, but that wouldn’t make it perfect.

What do you think if I hide the part after the comma, and you can only see it when mouse overing ?

I think that would be good, you mostly care about the words you are linkifying when you look at the list.

sam · March 8, 2018, 9:21am

I kind of think it needs another mode of item per row, that way at least you can tell what is going on in long lists

joffreyjaffeux · March 8, 2018, 9:23am

I see. Shouldn’t be hard to do, I already apply this kind of per multi-select modification for category colors, I have an idea, will work on it in the next days.

joffreyjaffeux · March 8, 2018, 10:20am

Here is my proposal:

A new site-setting type: dictionary.

one item per row
explicitly shows the key/value relation
ellipsis the end of the value so it’s always readable
will limit the height for the component so it becomes scrollable after something like 10 rows

If it works for you I will work on it beginning next week.

sam · March 8, 2018, 10:21am

Do we have other site settings that need this?

joffreyjaffeux · March 8, 2018, 10:25am

not to my knowledge, but AFAIK it doesn’t have to be an explicit new type server side, it could only be a new type client site like (url-list, host-list…)

So in the end it would be very little code, it’s mostly a subclass of list-setting where I split the label and present it differently.

sam · March 8, 2018, 10:33am

We should split this topic

I feel there are a few settings that list urls like allowed iframes and some others that can easily benefit from item-per-row, maybe even the user list in admin groups as well

I think we should start with a simple item per row mode prior to adding dictionary

joffreyjaffeux · March 13, 2018, 10:47am

After a discussion with sam:

rename our current “list” to “compact-list”, which will display as many items per row it can (list current behavior)
“list” will now only display one item per row
this shouldn’t touch server side client setting, default UI for list will be modified, and the new client side site setting “compact-list” will rely on “list”

iidbae · March 18, 2018, 7:31am

I think, there is a missing step in configuring Linkify component.

After this

Then, activate the linkify components in every theme.

I hope the last step should help others newbie like me.

I am certainly love this feature.