Preserve formatting when inserting articles

[btb]

Articles with Text or WikiText fields can display wiki/html formatting with no problem, but it is currently not possible to insert the article into a ticket reply with the formatting intact. This patch (when MessageBoxRichText is enabled) allows these custom fields to be rendered into a ticket message using the same standard ShowCustomField* elements as when viewing the article. This also means that tags other than those in @SCRUBBER_ALLOWED_TAGS will be scrubbed.

The article's Name and the custom field titles (if enabled) are formatted as html headings. Multi-value fields are rendered as html lists.

[btb]

Note that this is not the same as the issue addressed by “Add option to disable escaping HTML in articles (I#32374).” That only allows html tags themselves to be printed into your messages as code, not have their formatting actually rendered. as in: https://forum.bestpractical.com/t/4-4-4-beta2-possible-issue-with-new-unescaped-html-feature/33673

The intended function of that option is unclear to me so it isn't implemented here. (it is ignored when using MessageBoxRichText) - if we wanted to preserve the end result, we'd be escaping the html in this case, so that option seems to be clearly mis-named.

[Negatifff]

thank you very much. you save my time. I'm testing...

[robmunsch]

Hi there,

Thanks for this! It almost works for me. For some reason I am gettting doubled spaces when an article is inserted. There seem to be extra "br" tags inserted, for example, between list items; at the end of paragraphs; and any place it feels like.

Here is one article as it appears in source view in Articles:

<h2>Submitting Good Reports</h2>

<p>The first step in getting a problem solved is providing a good description of the issue. The better the description, the more promptly the issue can be addressed.<br />
Whether you use the web form, or e-mail, a problem report should <b>always</b> include the following information:</p>

<ul><li>The <b>name of the machine</b> where you are running the command, and any other computers that were involved</li>
<li>The full <b>name of the command</b> you are running, including the path to the command and all <b>options and arguments</b></li>
<li>The <b>login name of the user</b> running the command, particularly if jobs are run as a "project user", not under a personal account</li>
<li><b>Any output</b>, particularly error messages</li>
<li><b>What is not working</b> (i.e., what you expected to get from the command and what you actually received)</li>
<li>The <b>current environment</b> (on the servers, this can be shown with the output from the commands "<tt>module list ; env | sort</tt>")</li>
<li>For network issues, please include the <b>IP address</b> of the computer you are using (under Windows, run "<b><tt>ipconfig /all</b></tt>" from a command prompt; under Linux, run "<b><tt>ifconfig -a</tt></b>").</li>
</ul>

<p>It is almost impossible to troubleshoot an issue without this basic information.</p>

Once inserted into a ticket, it becomes this - apparently converting whitespace from the source into breaks?

<p>&nbsp;</p>

<h2>Submitting Good Reports</h2>

<p>&nbsp;</p>

<p>&nbsp;</p>

<p>The first step in getting a problem solved is providing a good description of the issue. The better the description, the more promptly the issue can be addressed.<br />
<br />
Whether you use the web form, or e-mail, a problem report should <strong>always</strong> include the following information:</p>

<p>&nbsp;</p>

<p>&nbsp;</p>

<ul>
	<li>The <strong>name of the machine</strong> where you are running the command, and any other computers that were involved</li>
	<br />
	<li>The full <strong>name of the command</strong> you are running, including the path to the command and all <strong>options and arguments</strong></li>
	<br />
	<li>The <strong>login name of the user</strong> running the command, particularly if jobs are run as a &quot;project user&quot;, not under a personal account</li>
	<br />
	<li><strong>Any output</strong>, particularly error messages</li>
	<br />
	<li><strong>What is not working</strong> (i.e., what you expected to get from the command and what you actually received)</li>
	<br />
	<li>The <strong>current environment</strong> (on the servers, this can be shown with the output from the commands &quot;module list ; env | sort&quot;)</li>
	<br />
	<li>For network issues, please include the <strong>IP address</strong> of the computer you are using (under Windows, run &quot;<strong>ipconfig /all</strong>&quot; from a command prompt; under Linux, run &quot;<strong>ifconfig -a</strong>&quot;).</li>
	<br />
	<br />
	&nbsp;
</ul>

<p>&nbsp;</p>

<p>&nbsp;</p>

<p>It is almost impossible to troubleshoot an issue without this basic information.</p>

Note: yes, that "disable escaping" option does in fact seem to be named backwards. I'm the one who posted that comment you link to, harhar. As you can see, I never got a response of any kind - so I very much appreciate you doing this!

[btb]

Hi there,

Thanks for this! It almost works for me. For some reason I am gettting doubled spaces when an article is inserted. There seem to be extra "br" tags inserted, for example, between list items; at the end of paragraphs; and any place it feels like.

Hi Rob, Is that field of type "Text" or "WikiText"? if it's WikiText, I recommend not mixing HTML in with it, because then you have two different renderers competing/adding to each other. If you want your HTML to render purely as HTML, use type "Text"

[robmunsch]

Oh strange - when I set it as a Text field, it had no formatting at all. I assumed I had to use WikiText. I'll set it back to Text and see if maybe I did something else to it.

Edit: no effect. The type was changed to Text; i then went to the article in question, Modify, re-saved it - and the same thing happens on insertion, exactly the same way.

[robmunsch]

Update: I've tested with my plaintext articles, that I use to insert canned responses. They are also now showing multiple extra line breaks where they were formatted correctly before. For instance, a plain text article with two paragraphs that used to show up like:

This is the first paragraph

And this is the second

Now has multiple blank lines between paragraphs, which I can see in source view as:

This is the first paragraph.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
And this is the second

Edit: I should also mention that in the Articles view, they appear normal. It's only the function that inserts them into a ticket that is adding all these extra breaks, and I haven't been able to figure out why.

[robmunsch]

Any updates on this? Has anyone else experienced this issue?

[robmunsch]

@btb Still there? Any news? Anything I can do to help you test? I'd really love to be able to use this.

[btb]

Sorry, I'll try to grab some time soon to take another look.

[craigkai]

There is the branch 4.4/respect-article-escape-html-in-includearticle which addresses this issue.

[robmunsch]

It doesn't, actually. Misleading description and not documented hugely well by BP. What that option does is allow literal HTML code to be printed as-is when inserted, instead of scrubbing it. The result is akin to using a "code" block tag on a post. It doesn't interpret the HTML - it just leaves it to be printed literal. Believe me, I banged my head against that for a while wondering what I was doing wrong.

---

From: Craig Kaiser [email protected] Sent: Friday, January 31, 2020 12:02 PM To: bestpractical/rt [email protected] Cc: Munsch, Rob [email protected]; Manual [email protected] Subject: [External] Re: [bestpractical/rt] Preserve formatting when inserting articles (#283)

There is the branch 4.4/respect-article-escape-html-in-includearticlehttps://github.com/bestpractical/rt/tree/4.4/respect-article-escape-html-in-includearticle which addresses this issue.

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[craigkai]

4.4/respect-article-escape-html-in-includearticle is a bug fix for the previous branch that added the include HTML feature. Testing your example from above I see the following:

Article page:

Ticket update page:

Is this the expected behavior?

[robmunsch]

Ooookay. On the BP forums, I was told I misunderstood that function and it was working as intended.....

I'm not sure what I'm looking at, however. Do you mean you used my text as a test on your own installation of that bugfix branch, and that's the result of inserting the article into a ticket? If so, then yes: it looks correctly formatted.

[craigkai]

Ooookay. On the BP forums, I was told I misunderstood that function and it was working as intended.....

There was a bug, so the feature did not work correctly. The new branch addresses that bug.

I'm not sure what I'm looking at, however. Do you mean you used my text as a test on your own installation of that bugfix branch, and that's the result of inserting the article into a ticket? If so, then yes: it looks correctly formatted.

Correct! I took your example from this thread and added it to the content of an article, then used the insert article feature on ticket update to insert the HTML content.