Jekyll_href

Jekyll_href is a Jekyll plugin that provides a new Liquid tag: href. It provides a convenient way to generate formatted and clickable URIs. The Liquid tag generates an a href HTML tag, which by default contains target="_blank" and rel="nofollow".

If the url starts with http, or the match keyword is specified:

• The url will open in a new tab or window.
• The url will include rel="nofollow" for SEO purposes.

CAUTION: if linked text contains a single or double quote, you will see the error message: Liquid Exception: Unmatched quote. Instead, use one of the following:

• ' (')
• " (")
• ‘ (‘)
• ’ (’)
• “ (“)
• ” (”)

Configuration

In _config.yml, if a section called plugin-vars exists, then its name/value pairs are available for substitution.

plugin-vars:
  django-github: 'https://github.com/django/django/blob/3.1.7'
  django-oscar-github: 'https://github.com/django-oscar/django-oscar/blob/3.0.2'

The following sections and settings can be set: Pry_on_href_error has priority over die_on_href_error.

href:
  die_on_href_error: false # Default value is false
  die_on_nomatch: true     # Default value is false
  pry_on_href_error: true  # Default value is false
href_summary:
  die_on_href_error: false # Default value is false
  pry_on_href_error: true  # Default value is false

Suppprted Syntaxes

Square brackets in the BNF notation below denote optional keyword parameters, and are not meant to be typed.

Syntax 1 (most verbose, but provides best results and enables implicit matching title)

{% href [match | [follow] [blank|notarget] [summary_exclude]] url="local_page.html" label="text to display" %}

1. The url can be #relative, a page in the Jekyll website, or prefaced with a protocol, such as https:
2. If match is provided, and label is not provided, then the title of the matched page is used as the label.

Syntax 2 (requires url without embedded spaces)

{% href [match | [follow] [blank|notarget] [page_title] [summary_exclude]] url text to display %}

1. The url must be a single token, without embedded spaces.
2. The url need not be enclosed in quotes.

Syntax 3 (always works)

This syntax is recommended when the URL contains a colon (:).

{% href [match | [follow] [blank|notarget]] [page_title] [summary_exclude]
  url="http://link.com with space.html" some text %}

1. Each of the above examples contain an embedded newline, which is legal.
2. The url must be enclosed by either single or double quotes.

Syntax 4 (implicit URL)

{% href [match | [follow] [blank|notarget] [page_title] [summary_exclude]] [shy|wbr] www.domain.com %}

The URI provided, for example www.domain.com, is used to form the URL by prepending https://, in this case the result would be https://www.domain.com. The displayed URI is enclosed in <code></code>, so the resulting text is <code>www.domain.com</code>.

Environment Variable Expansion

URLs can contain environment variable references. For example, if $domain, $uri and $USER are environment variables:

{% href http://$domain.html some text %}

{% href url="$uri" some text %}

{% href https://mslinn.html <code>USER=$USER</code> %}

Optional Parameters

page_title

For local pages, use the linked page title as the link text. This value overrides any provided link text.

blank

The target='_blank' attribute is not normally generated for relative links. To enforce the generation of this attribute, preface the link with the word blank. The blank and notarget parameters are mutually exclusive. If both are specified, blank prevails.

class

This option allows CSS classes to be added to the HTML generated by the href tag. It has no effect on the href_summary tag output.

For example:

{% href class='bg_yellow' https://mslinn.com click here %}

Expands to:

<a href="https://mslinn.com" class="bg_yellow" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">click here</a>

follow

To suppress the nofollow attribute, preface the link with the word follow.

label='whatever you want'

If the text to be linked contains an optional keyword argument, for example summary, that word will be removed from the displayed link text, unless the link text is provided via the label option. Both of the following produce the same output:

{% href https://mslinn.com label="This is a summary" %}
{% href label="This is a summary" https://mslinn.com %}

match

match will attempt to match the url fragment (specified as a regex) to a URL in any collection. If multiple documents have matching URL an error is thrown. The match option looks through the pages collection for a URL with containing the provided substring. Match implies follow and notarget.

notarget

To suppress the target attribute, preface the link with the word notarget. The blank and notarget parameters are mutually exclusive. If both are specified, blank prevails.

shy

The shy keyword option is only applicable for syntax 3 (implicit URL). This option causes displayed urls to have an ­ inserted after each slash (/). If both shy and wbr are specified, wbr prevails.

For example:

{% href shy mslinn.com/path/to/page.html %}

Expands to:

<a href="https://mslinn.com/path/to/page.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">mslinn.com/&shy;path/&shy;to/&shy;page.html</a>

style

This option allows CSS styling to be added to the HTML generated by the href tag. It has no effect on the href_summary tag output.

For example:

{% href style='color: red; font-weight: bold;' https://mslinn.com click here %}

Expands to:

<a href="https://mslinn.com" rel="nofollow" style="color: ref; font-weight: bold" target="_blank">click here</a>

summary

The summary name/value option provides an override for the linked text in the References section generated by the {% href_summary %} tag. If the value is the empty string, or no value is provided, the href tag is not included in the page summary.

summary_exclude

The summary_exclude keyword option prevents this href tag from appearing in the summary produced by the href_summary tag. You probably want all of your menu items (whose links are generated by the href tag) to have this keyword option.

mailto: links are always excluded, so there is no need to use this keyword option for those types of links.

wbr

The wbr keyword option is only applicable for syntax 3 (implicit URL). It add line break opportunites. This option causes displayed urls to have an <wbr> inserted after each slash (/). If both shy and wbr are specified, wbr prevails.

For example:

{% href wbr mslinn.com/path/to/page.html %}

Expands to:

<a href="https://mslinn.com/path/to/page.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">mslinn.com/<wbr>path/<wbr>to/<wbr>page.html</a>

Examples

1. Generates nofollow and target attributes:

   {% href https://mslinn.com The Awesome %}
   

2. Does not generate nofollow or target attributes.

   {% href follow notarget https://mslinn.com The Awesome %}
   

3. Does not generate nofollow attribute.

   {% href follow https://mslinn.com The Awesome %}
   

4. Does not generate target attribute.

   {% href notarget https://mslinn.com The Awesome %}
   

5. Matches page with URL containing abc.

   {% href match abc The Awesome %}
   

6. Matches page with URL containing abc.

   {% href match abc.html#tag The Awesome %}
   

7. Substitute name/value pair for the django-github variable defined above:

   {% href {{django-github}}/django/core/management/__init__.py#L398-L401
     <code>django.core.management.execute_from_command_line</code> %}
   

   Substitutions are only made to the URL, not to the linked text.

8. Dollar signs

   If the URL has a dollar sign in it, jekyll_href will attempt to replace an environment variable with its value. That will likely fail silently. To work around the problem, replace dollar signs in URLs with $.

   For example, given this URL: https://ammonite.io/#import$ivy rewrite as: https://ammonite.io/#import$ivy.

   Here is a complete invocation:

   {% href url="https://ammonite.io/#import$ivy" label="import $ivy" %}

References Generation

The href usages on each page can be summarized at the bottom of the pages in a References section. Links are presented in the summary in the order they appear in the page.

The summary is produced by the href_summary tag. Usage is:

{% href_summary [options] %}

Href tag options are used to generate the summary links, just as they were in the text above the References summary section. The only exception is the summary option, which overrides the linked text.

If more than one href tag specifies a URL, the first one that appears in the page sets the value of the linked text.

If a URL appears in more than one href with different follow values, a warning is logged.

Included href Tags

The following href tags are included in the summary:

• Those with links that start with http are always included.
• Those with relative links, and have the include_local keyword option.

Excluded href Tags

The following href tags are excluded from the summary:

• Those with links that start with mailto:.
• Those having the summary_exclude keyword option.

Example

Given these href and href_summary usages in a web page:

{% href https://rubygems.org RubyGems.org %}
{% href summary="Mothership" https://jekyllrb.com/ Jekyll %}
{% href summary="Mike Slinn" mslinn.com %}
{% href https://mslinn.com Mike Slinn %}
{% href summary="Front page of this website" / Front page %}

{% href_summary attribution include_local %}

Then the generated HTML looks like the following:

<h2 id="reference">References</h2>
<ol>
  <li><a href='https://rubygems.org' rel='nofollow' target='_blank'>RubyGems.org</a></li>
  <li><a href='https://jekyllrb.com/' rel='nofollow' target='_blank'>Mothership</a></li>
  <li><a href='https://mslinn.com/' rel='nofollow' target='_blank'><code>mslinn.com</code></a></li>
</ol>

<h2 id="local_reference">Local References</h2>
<ol>
  <li><a href='/'>Front page of this website</a></li>
</ol>

<div id="jps_attribute_735866" class="jps_attribute">
  <div>
    <a href="https://www.mslinn.com/jekyll/3000-jekyll-plugins.html#href" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">
      Generated by the jekyll_href v1.2.2 Jekyll plugin, written by Mike Slinn 2023-04-13.
    </a>
  </div>
</div>

You can read about the attribution option here.

Additional Information

More information is available on my website about my Jekyll plugins.

Installation

Add this line to your Jekyll website's Gemfile, within the jekyll_plugins group:

group :jekyll_plugins do
  gem 'jekyll_href'
end

And then execute:

$ bundle

Generated HTML

Without Keywords

{% href https://mslinn.com The Awesome %}

Expands to this:

<a href='https://mslinn.com' target='_blank' rel='nofollow'>The Awesome</a>

Which renders as this: The Awesome

With follow

{% href follow https://mslinn.com The Awesome %}

Expands to this:

<a href='https://mslinn.com' target='_blank'>The Awesome</a>

With notarget

 {% href notarget https://mslinn.com The Awesome %}

Expands to this:

<a href='https://mslinn.com' rel='nofollow'>The Awesome</a>

With follow notarget

{% href follow notarget https://mslinn.com The Awesome %}

Expands to this:

<a href='https://mslinn.com'>The Awesome</a>

With match

Looks for a post with a matching URL.

{% href match setting-up-django-oscar.html tutorial site %}

Might expand to this:

<a href='/blog/2021/02/11/setting-up-django-oscar.html'>tutorial site</a>

URI

{% href mslinn.com %}

Expands to this:

<a href='https://mslinn.com' target='_blank' rel='nofollow'><code>mslinn.com</code></a>

Which renders as: mslinn.com

Development

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

Install development dependencies like this:

$ BUNDLE_WITH="development" bundle

To install this gem onto your local machine, run:

$ bundle exec rake install

Test

A test website is provided in the demo directory.

1. Set breakpoints.

2. Initiate a debug session from the command line:

   $ bin/attach demo
   

3. Once the Fast Debugger signon appears, launch the test configuration called Attach rdebug-ide.

4. View the generated website at http://localhost:4444

Release

To release a new version,

1. Update the version number in version.rb.

2. Commit all changes to git; if you don't the next step might fail with an unexplainable error message.

3. Run the following:

   $ bundle exec rake release
   

   The above creates a git tag for the version, commits the created tag, and pushes the new .gem file to RubyGems.org.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/mslinn/jekyll_href.

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.