Custom BBCodes

R_J

I have been asked how to create custom BBCodes and I've realized that I never saw anyone speaking about this/offering a solution.

Since it is really simple, here is an example together with some places to look for information.

If you are the "first I learn before I do something" type of coder, here is some food for yor brain:
http://nbbc.sourceforge.net/doc/usage_enh.html
http://nbbc.sourceforge.net/doc/app_rule.html
And if you are more the "let me get my hands dirty, the sooner the better!" type of coder, here are two files where you can find BBCode implementations:
/library/core/class.bbcode.php
/vendor/vanilla/nbbc/src/BBCodeLibrary.php

Even if you prefer looking at the files, you should take a quick glance on the documentation and read a little bit about validating the input so that you will not open security holes with your custom BBCodes.

Enough said, here is a small example plugin which adds a custom BBCode so that a [bgbox color="green"]Hooray![/box] will be shown as <span class="BGBox" style="background-color:green">Hooray!</span>

<?php

$PluginInfo['customBBCode'] = [
    'Name' => 'Custom BBCode',
    'Description' => 'Adds some custom BBCode tags.',
    'Version' => '0.1',
    'Author' => 'Robin',
    'RequiredApplications' => ['Vanilla' => '>=2.3'],
    'MobileFriendly' => true,
    'License' => 'MIT'
];

class CustomBBCodePlugin extends Gdn_Plugin {
    public function bbcode_afterBBCodeSetup_handler($sender, $args) {
        $nbbc = &$args['BBCode'];
        $nbbc->addRule(
            'bgbox',
            [
                'mode' => $nbbc::BBCODE_MODE_ENHANCED,
                'template' => '<span class="BGBox" style="background-color:{$color}">{$_content}</span>',
                'allow' => ['color' => '/[a-zA-Z]+/'],
                'default' => ['color' => 'yellow'],
                'class' => 'inline',
                'allow_in' => ['listitem', 'block', 'columns', 'inline', 'link']
            ]
        );
    }
}

The BBCode rule added here is really simple. For more complex examples please look at the two files mentioned above. Have fun!

pitkmi

Any idea why this one wouldn't work on 3.3? I gave this one a try today, but it didn't do anything. I split $PluginInfo to addon.json, copied the php as is, but the span never shows up inline. The BBCode is getting parsed I think, since the [bgbox] tags aren't visible in the post but are present in the editor, but they're not affecting anything. Didn't see any errors anywhere.

I have been adding custom BBCodes straight into the Core files, so it's certainly doable, but handling them as plugins would make updates a lot less likely to break things I forgot I changed.

R_J

The problem is the HTML sanitizer. Even if you allow some tags in bbcode, they get stripped out afterwards. I found no clean solution for that. In theory you should be able to use the DI container to register your own class and allow some more tags, but I wasn't successful when trying to do so. There is another discussion about that. You might be able to find it and get more insights

johncobain

how to insert a code snippet ?

Kaspar

Code Example