Is there a way to create a link in Markdown that opens in a new window? If not, what syntax do you recommend to do this. I'll add it to the markdown compiler I use. I think it should be an option.
This question is related to
html
hyperlink
markdown
target
new-window
I ran into this problem when trying to implement markdown using PHP.
Since the user generated links created with markdown need to open in a new tab but site links need to stay in tab I changed markdown to only generate links that open in a new tab. So not all links on the page link out, just the ones that use markdown.
In markdown I changed all the link output to be <a target='_blank' href="..."> which was easy enough using find/replace.
You can add any attributes using {[attr]="[prop]"}
For example [Google] (http://www.google.com){target="_blank"}
For ghost markdown use:
[Google](https://google.com" target="_blank)
Found it here: https://cmatskas.com/open-external-links-in-a-new-window-ghost/
Not a direct answer, but may help some people ending up here.
If you are using GatsbyJS there is a plugin that automatically adds target="_blank" to external links in your markdown.
It's called gatsby-remark-external-links and the usage is like so:
yarn add gatsby-remark-external-links
plugins: [
{
resolve: `gatsby-transformer-remark`,
options: {
plugins: [{
resolve: "gatsby-remark-external-links",
options: {
target: "_blank",
rel: "noopener noreferrer"
}
}]
}
},
It also takes care of the rel="noopener noreferrer".
Reference the docs if you need more options.
Kramdown supports it. It's compatible with standard Markdown syntax, but has many extensions, too. You would use it like this:
[link](url){:target="_blank"}
With Markdown-2.5.2, you can use this:
[link](url){:target="_blank"}
One global solution is to put <base target="_blank">
into your page's <head> element. That effectively adds a default target to every anchor element. I use markdown to create content on my Wordpress-based web site, and my theme customizer will let me inject that code into the top of every page. If your theme doesn't do that, there's a plug-in
There's no easy way to do it, and like @alex has noted you'll need to use JavaScript. His answer is the best solution but in order to optimize it, you might want to filter only to the post-content links.
<script>
var links = document.querySelectorAll( '.post-content a' );
for (var i = 0, length = links.length; i < length; i++) {
if (links[i].hostname != window.location.hostname) {
links[i].target = '_blank';
}
}
</script>
The code is compatible with IE8+ and you can add it to the bottom of your page. Note that you'll need to change the ".post-content a" to the class that you're using for your posts.
As seen here: http://blog.hubii.com/target-_blank-for-links-on-ghost/
You can do this via native javascript code like so:
var pattern = /a href=/g;
var sanitizedMarkDownText = rawMarkDownText.replace(pattern,"a target='_blank' href=");
In my project I'm doing this and it works fine:
[Link](https://example.org/ "title" target="_blank")
But not all parsers let you do that.
This works for me: [Page Link](your url here "(target|_blank)")
I do not agree that it's a better user experience to stay within one browser tab. If you want people to stay on your site, or come back to finish reading that article, send them off in a new tab.
Building on @davidmorrow's answer, throw this javascript into your site and turn just external links into links with target=_blank:
<script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8">
// Creating custom :external selector
$.expr[':'].external = function(obj){
return !obj.href.match(/^mailto\:/)
&& (obj.hostname != location.hostname);
};
$(function(){
// Add 'external' CSS class to all external links
$('a:external').addClass('external');
// turn target into target=_blank for elements w external class
$(".external").attr('target','_blank');
})
</script>
I don't think there is a markdown feature.
Though there may be other options available if you want to open links which point outside your own site automatically with JavaScript.
var links = document.links;
for (var i = 0, linksLength = links.length; i < linksLength; i++) {
if (links[i].hostname != window.location.hostname) {
links[i].target = '_blank';
}
}
If you're using jQuery it's a tad simpler...
$(document.links).filter(function() {
return this.hostname != window.location.hostname;
}).attr('target', '_blank');
If you just want to do this in a specific link, just use the inline attribute list syntax as others have answered, or just use HTML.
If you want to do this in all generated <a> tags, depends on your Markdown compiler, maybe you need an extension of it.
I am doing this for my blog these days, which is generated by pelican, which use Python-Markdown. And I found an extension for Python-Markdown Phuker/markdown_link_attr_modifier, it works well. Note that an old extension called newtab seems not work in Python-Markdown 3.x.
For completed alex answered (Dec 13 '10)
A more smart injection target could be done with this code :
/*
* For all links in the current page...
*/
$(document.links).filter(function() {
/*
* ...keep them without `target` already setted...
*/
return !this.target;
}).filter(function() {
/*
* ...and keep them are not on current domain...
*/
return this.hostname !== window.location.hostname ||
/*
* ...or are not a web file (.pdf, .jpg, .png, .js, .mp4, etc.).
*/
/\.(?!html?|php3?|aspx?)([a-z]{0,3}|[a-zt]{0,4})$/.test(this.pathname);
/*
* For all link kept, add the `target="_blank"` attribute.
*/
}).attr('target', '_blank');
You could change the regexp exceptions with adding more extension in (?!html?|php3?|aspx?) group construct (understand this regexp here: https://regex101.com/r/sE6gT9/3).
and for a without jQuery version, check code below:
var links = document.links;
for (var i = 0; i < links.length; i++) {
if (!links[i].target) {
if (
links[i].hostname !== window.location.hostname ||
/\.(?!html?)([a-z]{0,3}|[a-zt]{0,4})$/.test(links[i].pathname)
) {
links[i].target = '_blank';
}
}
}
If one would like to do this systematically for all external links, CSS is no option. However, one could run the following sed command once the (X)HTML has been created from Markdown:
sed -i 's|href="http|target="_blank" href="http|g' index.html
This can be further automated by adding above sed command to a makefile. For details, see GNU make or see how I have done that on my website.
So, it isn't quite true that you cannot add link attributes to a Markdown URL. To add attributes, check with the underlying markdown parser being used and what their extensions are.
In particular, pandoc has an extension to enable link_attributes, which allow markup in the link. e.g.
[Hello, world!](http://example.com/){target="_blank"}
rmarkdown, bookdown, blogdown and so on), this is the syntax you want. pandoc with +link_attributesNote: This is different than the kramdown parser's support, which is one the accepted answers above. In particular, note that kramdown differs from pandoc since it requires a colon -- : -- at the start of the curly brackets -- {}, e.g.
[link](http://example.com){:hreflang="de"}
In particular:
# Pandoc
{ attribute1="value1" attribute2="value2"}
# Kramdown
{: attribute1="value1" attribute2="value2"}
^
^ Colon
I'm using Grav CMS and this works perfectly:
Body/Content:
Some text[1]
Body/Reference:
[1]: http://somelink.com/?target=_blank
Just make sure that the target attribute is passed first, if there are additional attributes in the link, copy/paste them to the end of the reference URL.
Also work as direct link:
[Go to this page](http://somelink.com/?target=_blank)
Source: Stackoverflow.com