Support HTML code in community/collection description fields

[anayram]

Many "Description or abstract" fields (at the Item level), as well as Description fields (Communities and Collections) contain HTML tags. Because these are text fields, HTML is not rendered in the UI and text looks garbled and it's way less readable than ideal.

Support HTML markup, specifically bold/strong text highlighting, italics, line breaks, and paragraphs entered in:

• Description field (Collection and Community levels)
• Description or Abstract field (Item level)

Examples of items with HTML tags:
Ad $ Summary
https://era.library.ualberta.ca/admin/communities/b41cdbfd-6af2-4a13-8ba6-59725565d445/collections/2c1f3d8f-376a-45f8-a422-2afc3363987d

Board Practices
https://era.library.ualberta.ca/admin/communities/b41cdbfd-6af2-4a13-8ba6-59725565d445/collections/71f4b544-22f3-436f-bed0-c215df838be9

Electrical and Computer Engineering, Department of
https://era.library.ualberta.ca/admin/communities/55bafdf5-db7f-48a8-a91e-69b8c01cc9fb

Platts Historical US Domestic Crude Prices
https://era.library.ualberta.ca/admin/communities/b41cdbfd-6af2-4a13-8ba6-59725565d445/collections/b73484ff-194c-4aa5-9011-95410f02ee34

[anayram]

Related to #1295

[seanluyk]

@mbarnett not sure what our resources are for these kinds of enhancements at the moment, but I'd like to flag this as a very desirable improvement for ERA. Rather than HTML tags for formatting, I think something like Markdown would work really well since that's already used in many of the tools staff working in repositories are familiar with

[mbarnett]

Makes sense! HTML is always a bit of a security risk but Markdown ought to be both more doable and fairly low effort.

I’ll refine this out a bit in the next day or two and then flag it as a good issue for some to pick up when they’re between larger priorities.

[seanluyk]

Excellent, thanks, Matt!

[mbarnett]

Scope/Notes:

– We convert Markdown->HTML on page render (so don't store the HTML or anything)
– To make this a lot less effort to achieve, no preview functionality initially. Re-edit it if your Markdown isn't great, etc.
– we'll want to do this by building/enhancing decorators for Communities et al using https://github.com/vmg/redcarpet to intercept and render the appropriate field.
– filter_html, no_images, no_styles, probably hard_wrap & link_attributes to add noreferer/noopener. That should leave room for text styling without security holes or accidentally breaking the page.
– will also need to use the StripDown renderer in the Solr exporters for all the fields this is added to, to completely strip out the Markdown when sending the data to Solr, because those special characters aren't going to play well with search indexes.
– not sure what the failure modes for RedCarpet are but rule #1 here is user input shouldn't be able to crash either the page or the Solr export, so we'll need to trap everything that it could possible complain about and fall back to just displaying the unrendered text or similar.
– unless I'm missing something we can't feature flag this, because the markdown text will be markdown-y even with the flag off.

[seanluyk]

Just confirming that this is in production? Feature flag has been enabled but I don't seem to be able to get any formatting to render, e.g. the hyperlink at the bottom of this description: https://era.library.ualberta.ca/admin/communities/e4fdd15f-c21d-4612-a2f7-bfec3fdfc1de/collections/089d2213-9263-4b07-b3c4-05e18d6260dd

[pgwillia]

This is in production. There isn't a feature flag for this feature. I'll take a look.

[seanluyk]

Thanks Tricia!

…

On Thu, 16 Dec 2021 at 11:25, Tricia Jenkins ***@***.***> wrote: This is in production. There isn't a feature flag for this feature. I'll take a look. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#1322 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ADRQ3TUL45EA3NC5EBHGIUTURIVLFANCNFSM4I5HEQFQ> . Triage notifications on the go with GitHub Mobile for iOS <https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1477376905?ct=notification-email&mt=8&pt=524675> or Android <https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.github.android&referrer=utm_campaign%3Dnotification-email%26utm_medium%3Demail%26utm_source%3Dgithub>. You are receiving this because you modified the open/close state.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[pgwillia]

Oh, I see. I missed a spot for rendering the markdown. Need to fix for admin but

https://era.library.ualberta.ca/communities/e4fdd15f-c21d-4612-a2f7-bfec3fdfc1de/collections/089d2213-9263-4b07-b3c4-05e18d6260dd

renders the markdown.

[seanluyk]

Thanks!

[pgwillia]

I opened a new issue for the outstanding work: #2708