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Handling URLs in text fields

In the text editor you can hit Ctrl-K to insert a clickable weblink (a <a href=""> tag). If you paste a URL into a rich text field, Lino will automatically convert it into a clickable weblink.

This page contains code snippets (lines starting with >>>), which are being tested during our development workflow. The following snippet initializes the demo project used throughout this page.

Make URLs clickable

The lino.utils.soup.sanitize() function internally calls lino.utils.soup.url2a(), which recognizes URLs in a plain text and converts them into clickable links.

>>> from lino.utils.soup import url2a

>>> print(url2a("https://www.example.com"))
<a href="https://www.example.com" target="_blank">www.example.com</a>

Of course we don’t want it to convert a weblink that has already been converted:

>>> print(url2a('<a href="https://www.example.com">www.example.com</a>'))
<a href="https://www.example.com">www.example.com</a>

Invalid URLs aren’t converted:

>>> print(url2a("http://invalid-url"))
http://invalid-url

More examples:

>>> print(url2a("https://www.foo.com/bar/baz.tgz"))
<a href="https://www.foo.com/bar/baz.tgz" target="_blank">www.foo.com/bar/baz.tgz</a>

>>> content = """
... <p>Some url: https://foo.example.com and
... some other url: https://saffre-rumma.net</p>
... """.strip()
>>> print(url2a(content))
<p>Some url: <a href="https://foo.example.com" target="_blank">foo.example.com</a> and
some other url: <a href="https://saffre-rumma.net" target="_blank">saffre-rumma.net</a></p>

>>> print(url2a("""A <a href="https://www.foo.com/foo">foo</a>
... and a <a href="https://bar.com">bar</a>."""))
A <a href="https://www.foo.com/foo">foo</a>
and a <a href="https://bar.com">bar</a>.

TODO

When lino_xl.lib.sources is installed, weblink will be converted into a lino_xl.lib.sources.Source row and a memo command:

>>> print(url2a('<a href="https://www.example.com">www.example.com</a>'))
...
[source 123 The retrieved title of the page]

Multiple links to the same URL will reuse the same lino_xl.lib.sources.Source row:

>>> print(url2a('<a href="https://www.example.com">www.example.com</a>'))
...
[source 123 The retrieved title of the page]