Automatically add a protocol to a link

[CepBoJIk]

Is this a bug report or feature request?

🆕 Feature request

The plugin should give an option for adding a protocol to a link automatically if a user doesn't provide it.

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If you'd like to see this feature implemented, add 👍 to this post.

[Mgsy]

Hi, thanks for the report. I have talked with @mlewand and we consider it as a valid feature request. Currently, if a user doesn't provide a protocol, he won't be able to visit a link.

The question is how it should be implemented? It might be simply configuration option which allows adding a protocol by default if it's not provided.

cc @Reinmar @mlewand

Related - https://github.com/ckeditor/ckeditor5-link/issues/187.

[CepBoJIk]

Correct me if i wrong, now i have ability to add attributes using decorators, provide callback function and check url. Actually, i can change href attribute overwriting it, but i don't have access to url.
I think, it's can be pretty cool change url presonally, it will adds extensibility.
How do i see it? Maybe it's real to add ability provide function as attribute value, and first argument can be - { url: ... }

[Reinmar]

Interesting case, but I think that decorators can't handle this now and I'd like to keep that feature reasonably simple, not to duplicate things that you can do by using converters directly. Because, in fact, link decorators are sugar for converters.

There's a new guide (not published yet in the official docs) which you may find interesting. You can start here: https://ckeditor5.github.io/docs/nightly/ckeditor5/latest/framework/guides/deep-dive/ui/conversion-introduction.html but the meat is here: https://ckeditor5.github.io/docs/nightly/ckeditor5/latest/framework/guides/deep-dive/ui/conversion-extending-output.html#adding-a-css-class-to-certain-inline-elements. It's about adding classes, but you can probably imagine adding the protocols this way too.

This will happen on data retrieval only, so it's not perfect, but it's fairly quick.

The other option is to use a model postfixer to listen to attribute application in the model and just change the URL. This still isn't perfect, because it happens in a way that isn't transparent to the user, but it'll do the job.

[jodator]

Things to consider:

1. Whether do it on UI or model level.
2. Should be a opt-in feature.
3. Which protocol to use https:// seems the most used now but quick research is welcome (another idea was to use current web page protocol but this might be tricky as it is not always the same as a link to an external page.