Nate's Blog

In my blog improvement travels, I identified that I wanted external links to open in new tab. "But how can I do that?" I asked myself, since there's no special syntax for that in markdown.

The answer was to use MarkdownContent and the remarkGfm plugin.

From there, I was able to intercept the output of the render and conditionally add target="_blank" when the href starts with https://.

The code in 3 parts -

1. Function that takes in the <a/> element and returns a ReactElement.

1const renderLink = ({
2  href,
3  children,
4}: {
5  href: string;
6  children: React.ReactElement;
7}) => {
8  const linkProps: {
9    href: string;
10    ["aria-label"]: string;
11    target?: "_blank";
12    rel?: "noopener noreferrer";
13  } = { href, ["aria-label"]: `link to ${href}` };
14  if (href.startsWith("https://")) {
15    linkProps.target = "_blank";
16    linkProps.rel = "noopener noreferrer";
17  }
18  return <a {...linkProps}>{children}</a>;
19};
20
tsx

2. the renderers object, where we wire up the tag, the keys in the object, with its corresponding transformation.

1const renderers: { [nodeType: string]: RendererFunction } = {
2  a: ({ href, children }): React.ReactElement => renderLink({ href, children }),
3};
4
tsx

3. Wire it all up in the component

1export const MarkdownContent: React.FC<MarkdownContentProps> = ({
2  content,
3}) => (
4  <ReactMarkdown
5    components={renderers as any}
6    remarkPlugins={[remarkGfm]}
7    className="py-8"
8  >
9    {content}
10  </ReactMarkdown>
11);
12
tsx

And it's incredibly testable!

Just look how straight forward this is.

1/// <reference lib="dom" />
2
3
4import { expect, test } from "bun:test";
5import { render, cleanup } from "@testing-library/react";
6import { MarkdownContent } from "./RenderMarkdown";
7
8test("link with internal href opens locally ", async () => {
9	const testHref = "anyLocalLink";
10	const testLinkMarkdown = `[any string](${testHref})`;
11	const { getByRole } = render(<MarkdownContent content={testLinkMarkdown} />);
12	const link = await getByRole("link");
13	expect(link.attributes.getNamedItem("href")?.value).toBe(testHref);
14	expect(link.attributes.getNamedItem(target")?.value).toBeUndefined();
15	expect(link.attributes.getNamedItem("rel")?.value).toBeUndefined()
16});
17
18test("link with enteral href opens to new tab ", async () => {
19	cleanup();
20	const testHref = "https://example.com";
21	const testLinkMarkdown = `[any string](${testHref})`;
22	const { getByRole } = render(<MarkdownContent content={testLinkMarkdown} />);
23	const link = await getByRole("link");
24	expect(link.attributes.getNamedItem("href")?.value).toBe(testHref);
25	expect(link.attributes.getNamedItem("target")?.value).toBe("_blank");
26	expect(link.attributes.getNamedItem("rel")?.value).toBe(
27	"noopener noreferrer"
28	);
29});
30
tsx

Relevant Commits

• Installing react-markdown and use renderers and remarkGfm to rewrite external links to open in new tabs
• Adding unit tests links that render in Markdown