Replace calls to cheerio with a native JS implementation

[julianlam]

Every time we render a post (postTools.toHTML), we utilise cheerio to break down the fully rendered HTML into element objects, find the anchors, replace its href to send the user to that NodeBB's /outgoing route, and then re-render the code again back into HTML.

Cheerio, being a synchronous utility, is not the ideal solution for this.

Questions/Tasks

1. Do we even need an /outgoing page, has it fallen out of favour?
2. Should the /outgoing page be made a plugin instead?
   • If so, the plugin system needs the ability to add new routes dynamically
3. If yes, replace the single call to cheerio with a native JS regexp implementation
4. Remove cheerio as a dependency

[julianlam]

Paging @psychobunny re: Question 1.

[psychobunny]

I realize there was a comment about someone not liking it earlier, but its actually a pretty useful thing to have. Maybe not necessarily in the core though (or having the ability to switch on/off)

Maybe the optimal thing to do is to replace the link upon saving, what do you think?

[julianlam]

That would be a good solution for me, but I am a huge fan of not mucking around with a user's post.

In short, if I post something, then edit it, the raw text that is returned to me should be the exact same text that I input earlier, and altering the urls on-save would break this "rule" (note the quotes).

How about this: We don't even bother changing the URL altogether (so if the user hovers over the url, it'll be the actual link), but we have some js on the client side:

$(document.body).on('click', 'a', function() {
    if (internal link) ajaxify.go();
    else document.locaton('/outgoing...');
});

In fact, I believe the basic code is already in ajaxify to detect if a href is #, in order to do nothing, right? You could extend it so that urls not going to the same domain will send the user to the /outgoing route instead.

[julianlam]

Take a look at James Padolsey's Parsing URLs with the DOM!.

this.hostname is already present, so there's probably even no need to do regex trickery to find the domain...

[psychobunny]

this is the route that seems the best, hope that's what you ended up doing:

In fact, I believe the basic code is already in ajaxify to detect if a href is #, in order to do nothing, right? You could extend it so that urls not going to the same domain will send the user to the /outgoing route instead.

[julianlam]

Yeah, I just compare the domain (might have to check port too, now that I think about it)