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Exposure; The sinister secrets of in the 'Other' protocol for your rich-text hyperlink

Hi there AppWorks fans,

Welcome to a new installment of AppWorks tips.

For this week, an end-user option on the agenda which passed my journey accidentally when playing with a property of type ‘Long text’ converted into a rich-text editor on a ‘Form’. What I want to show you is the option (in runtime) to create a link (from within that rich-text editor) with the protocol option “other”; You will see it all below; I always thought hyperlinks can only have a protocol like http(s)://, or ftp://:, or news://. So, I was curious what the “Other” option was and because I didn’t get an answer from all my surrounding experts, I took a moment to experience it myself. 😁

Let get right into it…

It’s time to boot the VM and dive into your workspace with the developer account. Make sure you have a project available with basic folderstructure (as always). Create a simple entity with two properties. One is a name case_name of type ‘Text; the other property is case_description of type ‘Long text’. Generate all the other building blocks and apply your initial naming convention to it. When ready, open the ‘Create’ form and change the case_description field to a rich-text editor box:

other_link_001

Publish the entity, and try-out the field in runtime for a new entity instance (of the crafted ‘Case’ entity!). You see something like this where you can create a link from the selected text:

other_link_002

Clicking the option will show a modal dialog with this information (and the protocol options for this post; with <other> being the outlier):

other_link_003

If you ask the valid question what is the protocol <other>, we can shake hands!

…

Time for try-outs…I’ll simply create a new link for each type of protocol. If you watch the Chrome developer tools closely, you have a result like this:

other_link_004

This is a copy for readability:

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<body>
  <a data-cke-saved-href="appworks-tips.com" href="appworks-tips.com">OTHER</a><br>
  <a data-cke-saved-href="http://appworks-tips.com" href="http://appworks-tips.com">HTTP</a><br>
  <a data-cke-saved-href="https://appworks-tips.com" href="https://appworks-tips.com">HTTPS</a><br>
  <a data-cke-saved-href="news://appworks-tips.com" href="news://appworks-tips.com">NEWS</a><br>
  <a data-cke-saved-href="ftp://appworks-tips.com" href="ftp://appworks-tips.com">FTP</a><br>
</body>

Now what? I can save the entity instance, but if the rich-text editor is “editable”, I can’t click on the links! So, we require a workaround. I pick the quick and dirty workaround to add a second case_description field on the ‘Create’ form with a read-only checkmark:

other_link_005

The better workaround would be to add the ‘Security’ BB, add 2 roles (one who can edit, one who can only view); Attach the correct role to the correct user and test with two separate users. Comment me if you don’t have a clue how to make this work.

In runtime this results in a view where we can verify the real URLs behind our linking actions. They all look as expected, but watch the “other” protocol; This one results onto a URL like this 

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http://192.168.56.107:8080/home/appworks_tips/app/start/web/item/080027f2140da1ef818f397492b610f9.1/080027f2140da1ef818f3c263a34a55d/appworks-tips.com

Interesting…That’s the current URL with an additional appworks-tips.com value!
So, when I update my link to ../../appworks-tips.com, this (as expected) results in a URL like this http://192.168.56.107:8080/home/appworks_tips/app/start/web/item/appworks-tips.com

AHA….AND ../../../../../../../../appworks-tips.com result into http://192.168.56.107:8080/appworks-tips.com

Don’t try further as that’s the finish line!

What did we learn from the “other” protocol? Well, this makes it for end-users possible to create quick links within the current solution! 😎 I don’t know if end-users will use it that much, but now we know at least how it works.

That’s an-“Other” DONE! A done where we learned about the hyperlink option for a rich-text editor on a ‘Long text’ property type. For specific use-uses, I understand the option now and how it can benefit in those circumstances. I don’t know if I will ever use it, but I can image your end-users will. Give me a comment on your experience; I see you next week with another exposing topic at AppWorks-Tips.com

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