# Trying to replace / auto-format strings in user posts
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/trying-to-replace-auto-format-strings-in-user-posts/285326
**Category:** Development
**Created:** [November 13, 2023, 3:32pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/trying-to-replace-auto-format-strings-in-user-posts/285326 "2023-11-13T15:32:21Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@hemes](https://meta.discourse.org/u/hemes)
#### Post date: [November 13, 2023, 3:32pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/trying-to-replace-auto-format-strings-in-user-posts/285326/1 "2023-11-13T15:32:21Z")
Hello, I am new to Discourse and have my site up and am trying to get a critical piece of functionality I need for a major portion of the community figured out.
Users have software that can export magic strings that represent some game state and I want to render that state nicely as a table that gets generated from the string (at page load time).
Ideally, I give users a template when posting or they put their magic string inside a named class or something and the string just gets rendered (decorated?) at page load time.
Can I do this? I am currently thinking I should write a script that parses the strings for all elements/classes of that type but am struggling on how/when to get the script to modify the displayed (cooked?) post.
Thanks,
Brett
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### Author:  [@Arkshine](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Arkshine)
#### Post date: [November 13, 2023, 4:48pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/trying-to-replace-auto-format-strings-in-user-posts/285326/2 "2023-11-13T16:48:36Z")
Sure, it should be possible. You have an API to decorate the cooked post.
For example: [decorateCookedElement](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/main/app/assets/javascripts/discourse/app/lib/plugin-api.js#L379)
Can you share a visual example of exactly what you’re trying to achieve?
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### Author:  [@Moin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Moin)
#### Post date: [November 13, 2023, 4:50pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/trying-to-replace-auto-format-strings-in-user-posts/285326/3 "2023-11-13T16:50:55Z")
Maybe you can create your own style
> [@Customize posts' contents with your own styles](https://meta.discourse.org/t/customize-posts-contents-with-your-own-styles/257738):
>
> Requirementsinformation_source To be able to use these tips and tricks, you need to be an administrator of either a self-hosted Discourse instance or a [Discourse-hosted plan](https://discourse.org/pricing) higher than Basic. Introduction Discourse supports several methods to format and customize a post’s contents. You can find the list here: But sometimes, you’ll want something more specific, for example, a link that looks like a button. [Green button] This is the kind of modification we’ll learn here. The logic I’l…
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### Author:  [@hemes](https://meta.discourse.org/u/hemes)
#### Post date: [November 13, 2023, 5:18pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/trying-to-replace-auto-format-strings-in-user-posts/285326/4 "2023-11-13T17:18:51Z")
All right! It seems that `decorateCookedElement` is what I needed (per @Arkshine note).
I also found this post that has some nice examples to filter on elements of interest:
[How do we fire scripts after topic HTML is rendered in DOM? - dev - Discourse Meta](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-do-we-fire-scripts-after-topic-html-is-rendered-in-dom/114701)
In particular, I found this very helpful:
```plaintext
$.fn.doSomething = function() {
const targetElement = $(this).children("[data-theme-test]").length;
if (!targetElement) return;
// do your work
return this;
};
api.decorateCooked($elem => $elem.doSomething(), { onlyStream: true });
```
Thank you!
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### Author:  [@system](https://meta.discourse.org/u/system)
#### Post date: [December 13, 2023, 5:19pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/trying-to-replace-auto-format-strings-in-user-posts/285326/5 "2023-12-13T17:19:08Z")
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