Automatically Replacing Spaces with Dashes in URLs within RTE

Question

I'm working with Sitecore 10.1 and need help with the Rich Text Editor (RTE). I want all links added to the RTE to automatically replace spaces with dashes in the URL to maintain consistency and meet SEO standards.

Currently, links like http://example.com/Example Link Text are not automatically converting spaces to dashes, despite the following configuration in Sitecore.config:

<replace find=" " mode="on" replaceWith="-"/>
<replace find="%20" mode="on" replaceWith="-"/>

How can I ensure URLs in the RTE automatically convert spaces to dashes?

Answer 1

You will need to create a custom processor inside renderField pipeline to replace space with dashes in external urls inside RTE.

1. Firstly you will need to create a custom processor as below, that converts the Html inside RTE to HtmlDocument that can be used for searching href attributes in the HTML dom and replacing their values as desired.

using HtmlAgilityPack;
using Sitecore;
using Sitecore.Diagnostics;
using Sitecore.Pipelines.RenderField;
using System;
using System.Linq;

public class EncodeExternalLinks
{
   public virtual void Process(RenderFieldArgs args)
   {
      Assert.ArgumentNotNull((object)args, nameof(args));
      if (Context.PageMode.IsExperienceEditorEditing)
         return;
      if (args.FieldTypeKey == "rich text")
      {
          var richTextHtml = args.Result.FirstPart;
          var doc = new HtmlDocument();
          doc.LoadHtml(richTextHtml);
          var anchorNodes = doc.DocumentNode.SelectNodes("//a[@href]");
          if (anchorNodes != null && anchorNodes.Any())
          {
             foreach (var anchorNode in anchorNodes)
             {
                Uri originalUrl;
                var hrefAttribute = anchorNode.Attributes.Where(x => x.Name.Equals("href"))?.FirstOrDefault();
                if (hrefAttribute != null && Uri.TryCreate(hrefAttribute.Value, UriKind.Absolute, out originalUrl))
                {
                    hrefAttribute.Value = hrefAttribute.Value.Replace(" ", "-");
                }
             }
             args.Result.FirstPart = doc.DocumentNode.InnerHtml;
          }
       }
    }
}

2. Thereafter you need to patch the custom processor created above as below after the ExpandLinks processor under the renderField pipeline.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/" xmlns:set="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/set/">
    <sitecore>
      <pipelines>
            <renderField>
                <processor patch:after="*[@type='Sitecore.Pipelines.RenderField.ExpandLinks, Sitecore.Kernel']" type="SitecoreCustomExtensions.Pipelines.EncodeExternalLinks,SitecoreCustomExtensions" resolve="true" />
            </renderField>
      </pipelines>
    </sitecore>
</configuration>

Once the above changes are done, external link inside RTE will have spaces in the url replaced with dash(-). Let me know in case you have any doubts.

Hope this helps!!!