Liquid Tags

Liquid tags are special elements of the Forem Markdown editor.

They are custom embeds that are added via a {% %} syntax. Liquid is a templating language developed by Shopify.

Liquid embeds are for tweets, like {% tweet 765282762081329153 %} or a Forem user profile preview, like {% user jess %} etc.

They make for good community contributions because they can be extended and improved consistently. It is truly how we extend the functionality of the editor. At the moment, there could be a lot of work refactoring and improving existing liquid tags, in addition to adding new ones.

Liquid tags are sort of like functions, which have a name and take arguments. Develop them with that mindset in terms of naming things. They should be documented but also intuitive. They should also be fairly flexible in the arguments they take. Currently, this could use improvements.

Note: Liquid tags are "compiled" when an article is saved. So you will need to re-save articles to see HTML changes.

Here is a bunch of liquid tags supported on Forem:

{% link https://dev.to/kazz/boost-your-productivity-using-markdown-1be %}
{% user jess %}
{% tag git %}
{% devcomment 2d1a %}
{% podcast https://dev.to/basecspodcast/s2e2--queues-irl %}
{% twitter 834439977220112384 %}
{% glitch earthy-course %}
{% github forem/forem %}
{% youtube dQw4w9WgXcQ %}
{% vimeo 193110695 %}
{% twitch ClumsyPrettiestOilLitFam %}
{% slideshare rdOzN9kr1yK5eE %}
{% codepen https://codepen.io/twhite96/pen/XKqrJX %}
{% stackblitz ball-demo %}
{% codesandbox ppxnl191zx %}
{% jsfiddle https://jsfiddle.net/link2twenty/v2kx9jcd %}
{% dotnetfiddle https://dotnetfiddle.net/PmoDip %}
{% replit @WigWog/PositiveFineOpensource %}
{% stackery deeheber lambda-layer-example layer-resource %}
{% nexttech https://nt.dev/s/6ba1fffbd09e %}
{% instagram BXgGcAUjM39 %}
{% speakerdeck 7e9f8c0fa0c949bd8025457181913fd0 %}
{% soundcloud https://soundcloud.com/user-261265215/dev-to-review-episode-1 %}
{% spotify spotify:episode:5V4XZWqZQJvbddd31n56mf %}
{% blogcast 1234 %}
{% kotlin https://pl.kotl.in/owreUFFUG %}
{% wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia %}
{% reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/aww/comments/ag3s4b/ive_waited_28_years_to_finally_havr_my_first_pet %}

How liquid tags are developed

Liquid tags are a matter of parsing the "arguments" and serving relevant JavaScript.

Liquid tags go in the app/liquid_tags folder. All liquid tags inherit from the base, like so...

class KotlinTag < LiquidTagBase

Each liquid tag contains an initialize method which takes arguments and calls super. It also has a render method which calls the appropriate view.

  def initialize(_tag_name, link, _parse_context)
    super
    stripped_link = ActionController::Base.helpers.strip_tags(link)
    the_link = stripped_link.split.first
    @embedded_url = KotlinTag.embedded_url(the_link)
  end

  def render(_context)
    ApplicationController.render(
      partial: PARTIAL,
      locals: {
        url: @embedded_url
      }
    )
  end

View files can be found in app/views/liquids.

Each new liquid tag should be accompanied by instructions in app/views/pages/_editor_guide_text.html.erb.

Liquid Tags should also be accompanied by tests in spec/liquid_tags which confirm expected behavior.

Some Liquid Tags are constructed using HTML and CSS within the app, and some are constructed by displaying an iframe of an external site.

CSS for Liquid Tags are found in app/assets/stylesheets/ltags. Liquid tag classes should generally be prepended by ltag__. e.g. ltag__tag__content etc.

Here is an example of a good Liquid Tag pull request... https://github.com/forem/forem/pull/3801

Restricting liquid tags by roles

To only allow users with specific roles to use a liquid tag, you need to define a VALID_ROLES constant on the liquid tag itself. It needs to be an Array of valid roles. For single resource roles, it needs to be an Array with the role and the resource. Here's an example:

class NewLiquidTag < LiquidTagBase
  VALID_ROLES = [
    :admin,
    [:restricted_liquid_tag, LiquidTags::UserSubscriptionTag]
  ].freeze
end

Here we are saying that the UserSubscriptionTag is only usable by users with the admin role or with a role of :restricted_liquid_tag and a specified resource of LiquidTags::UserSubscriptionTag.

LiquidTags::UserSubscriptionTag is a resource model so we that can play nicely with the Rolify gem. See /admin for more information.

REMINDER: if you do not define a VALID_ROLES constant, the liquid tag will be usable by all users by default.

Restricting liquid tags by context

Context, in terms of a liquid tag, is where a liquid tag is being used (i.e. Article, Comment, etc.). In other words, if you want to make a liquid tag that can only be used in articles, you need to restrict the liquid tag by context.

To do this you need to add a VALID_CONTEXTS constant on the liquid tag itself. It needs to be an Array of class names that are valid. For example, to restrict a liquid tag to only be usable in articles you would do:

class NewLiquidTag < LiquidTagBase
  VALID_CONTEXTS = %w[Article].freeze
end

REMINDER: if you do not define a VALID_CONTEXTS constant the liquid tag will be usable in all contexts by default.