`newWindow` option should affect existing anchor tags

[afeld]

If newWindow is true, existing anchor tags should get target="blank" added.

[gregjacobs]

Nooo, don't want to hijack people's regular links... Just want to do this for external links

On Sep 19, 2012, at 12:16 AM, Aidan Feldman notifications@github.com wrote:

If newWindow is true, existing anchor tags should get target="blank" added.

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[afeld]

Sure we do! How about a config option? modifyExisting or something?

[gregjacobs]

What's the use case? And are you looking to update only links created by Autolinker, or all links that it can get its hands on?

I couldn't see this as being what a user would expect in a generalized sense.. They might have links in a given page that refer to internal urls for their site, but then want to autolink external urls found in the plain text to new windows.

[afeld]

I suppose that makes sense. For Jux, for example, I thinking that if someone forgets to include the target="_blank" on external links they added manually, they wouldn't want someone to leave their page.

[gregjacobs]

Ah, then you might want a separate method to handle that :)

Try this:

var anchorTagRegex = /<a(?:(?:\s+\w+(?:\s*=\s*(?:".*?"|'.*?'|[^'">\s]+))?)+\s*|\s*)\/?>/g,
    targetAttrRegex = /target\s*=\s*(".*?"|'.*?'|[^'">\s]+)/;

var makeLinksOpenInNewWindow = function( html ) {
    return html.replace( anchorTagRegex, function( anchorTag ) {
        var targetAttrMatch = anchorTag.match( targetAttrRegex );  // find any pre-existing 'target' attribute
        if( targetAttrMatch ) {
            // For the case where the 'target' attr exists, and it is something other
            // than "_blank", replace it. We always want it to be "_blank". 
            var targetAttrValue = targetAttrMatch[ 1 ].replace( /['"]/g, "" );  // strip away any quote characters from the value
            if( targetAttrValue !== "_blank" ) {
                anchorTag = anchorTag.replace( targetAttrRegex, 'target="_blank"' );
            }
        } else {
            // no target attribute, add it
            anchorTag = anchorTag.substr( 0, anchorTag.length - 1 ) + ' target="_blank">';
        }

        return anchorTag;
    } );
}

// Testing... Convert to unit tests :)
var nonTargetStr = 'The <a href="http://www.yahoo.com">quick</a> brown fox';
var targetBlankStr = 'The <a href="http://www.yahoo.com" target="_blank">quick</a> brown fox';  // this one shouldn't change
var targetSomethingElseStr = 'The <a href="http://www.yahoo.com" target="somethingElse">quick</a> brown fox';

var expectedStr = 'The <a href="http://www.yahoo.com" target="_blank">quick</a> brown fox';

console.log( "No target attr test passes: ", makeLinksOpenInNewWindow( nonTargetStr ) === expectedStr );
console.log( "target='_blank' test passes: ", makeLinksOpenInNewWindow( targetBlankStr ) === expectedStr );
console.log( "target='somethingElse' test passes: ", makeLinksOpenInNewWindow( targetSomethingElseStr ) === expectedStr );

[gregjacobs]

Maybe I should make a separate github repo for that little utility... lol