How to Open "External Link" in New Window via CMS?

[wesleyboar]

In GitLab by @tacc-wbomar on Jan 21, 2020, 12:52

Deliverables

Tickets:

• Open "External Link" in New Window - Text Plugin #289
• Open "External Link" in New Window - TACC Plugin #291
• Open "External Link" in New Window - CMS Menu #292
• Open "External Link" in New Window - Plugins with Links #290

Solutions:

• GH-7: Save "External Link" JavaScript Snippet #178

Goal

Any link to an external website should open in an external window. Especially:

• a header navigation link
• a link to an external news article, see How to Support External News Articles #112
• a link within CMS text content

Requirements

1. Any link to external website should open in a new window when clicked*.
2. This feature should not require configuration by CMS user.

* When clicked without modification key from user. (Cmd+ click on Mac browsers opens link in new window.)

Background

Django CMS does not manage this by default. Maybe the CMS user can do this per link. Or maybe not.

This should be a high priority ticket, because the original issue was created too long ago (GL-1), and it is the first request Hedda made fo me for CMS, and she has re-requested a few times.

Direction

See Direction in tickets listed in Deliverables.

Archived

CMS Menu & Article Listing

Use a Django filter "templatetag":

1. (Python) Parse any known URL before rendering a link.
2. (Python) Conditionally render target="_blank" attribute in link.
3. (Template) Apply the filter to CMS menu markup.
4. (Template) Apply the filter to article listing template/s (or a shared partial)

Text Plugin

Unsure. Ideas:

• A. Find a way for CMS user to set link with target="_blank" and document this step as a requirement.
• B. Author JavaScript to conditionally add target="_blank" after render for any links whose domain is different.
  • Gotcha: This is not possible for old CMS sites, because they do not use the external URL directly—they filter a redirect through a local slug. To remedy this, an array of such "redirect slugs/paths" may be provided to the script.

[wesleyboar]

In GitLab by @taoteg on Feb 12, 2020, 09:32

Need to install the cascade plugin to enable this capability.

https://djangocms-cascade.readthedocs.io/en/latest/link-plugin.html

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Update (2020-04-05 by @tacc-wbomar): This link does not solve CMS navigation (i.e. header) link. And the other cases are already solved by existing plugins (Bootstrap4LinkPlugin, LinkPlugin)

[wesleyboar]

In GitLab by @tacc-wbomar on Jan 20, 2021, 11:16

mentioned in commit 029deeb

[wesleyboar]

The priority is now High, because this issue was created too long ago (GL-1), and is the first request Hedda made fo me for CMS, and has re-requested a few times.

[wesleyboar]

In #264, @tacc-wbomar:

• learned how to (but did not) nest (Bootstrap4)LinkPlugin in a TACC plugin
• learned how to (and did so) include LinkPlugin fields in a TACC plugin

[wesleyboar]

The CMS menu solution does not work on Portal pages, like Public Data.

(This caveat was first documented in CEP Testing Session 7/13/21.)

[wesleyboar]

Closing issue because research is half done and split among three tasks (#289, #291, #292) and has starter code in one PR (#178) for JavaScript implementation solutions.