MTResolveURLs

ResolveURLs is a Movable Type plugin by Alexei Kosut to resolve relative URLs in weblog entries. It adds a new global filter resolve_urls that can be used in any MT template tag. Enabling this causes relative URLs to be resolved against your weblog site URL, and output as absolute.

This is useful, as relative URLs are convenient to type, but unsafe, since weblog entries can be seen from a number of different pages (e.g., from the index or from an archive page), each of which might resolve a relative URL differently. RSS feeds make the problem of relative URLs even worse, since your links may end up on another site where relative URLs will not point to your pages at all.

Current version: 1.0.2

Requirements

• Movable Type. I have only tested with version 2.51, although others may work.
• URI. I think this is indirectly required by MT, though, so you probably already have it installed.

Installation

To install, copy ResolveURLs.pl into your Movable Type plugins directory.

Use

Add resolve_urls="1" to any template tag where you want relative URLs expanded. For example, to display the body of an entry with URLs expanded, you might use:

<$MTEntryBody resolve_urls=”1”$>

The filter will search for any HTML tags with href or src attributes, and make sure the corresponding URLs are absolute. Relative URLs are resolved against the weblog site URL, as configured in Movable Type.

The resolve_urls filter can be used in any template tag where a weblog is in context. I use it in my weblog for all <$MTEntryBody$> and <$MTEntryMore$> tags, to make sure no relative URLs sneak out.

Version 1.0.2

• Does not resolve fragment-only URLs (e.g., #foo), since these usually refer to anchors inside the entry itself, and are “safe” for encapsulation.

Version 1.0.1

• Recognizes link attribute values delimited with single or no quotation marks as well as those with double quotation marks.
• Before resolving relative URLs, adds a trailing slash to the site URL if there isn’t one already.

(Changes suggested by Phil Ringnalda)

Version 1.0

• Initial release

• Currently, the HTML “parser” is not very smart, and it’s possible it might identify URLs that aren’t actually links that should be expanded.

Please send any comments or suggestions to Alexei Kosut at akosut@cs.stanford.edu or comment below.

Related weblog entries

• Movable Type plugin: ResolveURLs

Comments & Trackbacks

• Re: MTResolveURLs (Jacques Distler)
• Re: MTResolveURLs (Jay)
• Re: MTResolveURLs (Jay)