Integrating a Rich Text Editor

Build your own wysiwyg plugin.

Elgg is bundled with a plugin for CKEditor, and previously shipped with TinyMCE support. However, if you have a wysiwyg that you prefer, you could use this tutorial to help you build your own.

All forms in Elgg should try to use the provided input views located in views/default/input. If these views are used, then it is simple for plugin authors to replace a view, in this case input/longtext, with their wysiwyg.

Add the WYSIWYG library code

Now you need to upload TinyMCE into a directory in your plugin. We strongly encourage you to use composer to manage third-party dependencies, since it is so much easier to upgrade and maintain that way:

composer require npm-asset/tinymce

Tell Elgg when and how to load TinyMCE

Now that you have:

• created your start file

• intialized the plugin

• uploaded the wysiwyg code

It is time to tell Elgg how to apply TinyMCE to longtext fields.

We’re going to do that by extending the input/longtext view and including some javascript. Create a view tinymce/longtext and add the following code:

<?php

    /**
     * Elgg long text input with the tinymce text editor intacts
     * Displays a long text input field
     */

?>
<!-- include tinymce -->
<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src="<?php echo $vars['url']; ?>mod/tinymce/tinymce/jscripts/tiny_mce/tiny_mce.js"></script>
<!-- intialise tinymce, you can find other configurations here http://wiki.moxiecode.com/examples/tinymce/installation_example_01.php -->
<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">
   tinyMCE.init({
    mode : "textareas",
    theme : "advanced",
    theme_advanced_buttons1 : "bold,italic,underline,separator,strikethrough,justifyleft,justifycenter,justifyright, justifyfull,bullist,numlist,undo,redo,link,unlink,image,blockquote,code",
    theme_advanced_buttons2 : "",
    theme_advanced_buttons3 : "",
    theme_advanced_toolbar_location : "top",
    theme_advanced_toolbar_align : "left",
    theme_advanced_statusbar_location : "bottom",
    theme_advanced_resizing : true,
    extended_valid_elements : "a[name|href|target|title|onclick],img[class|src|border=0|alt|title|hspace|vspace|width|height|align|onmouseover|onmouseout|name],
hr[class|width|size|noshade],font[face|size|color|style],span[class|align|style]"
});
</script>

Then, in your plugin’s elgg-plugin.php file extend the input/longtext view:

return [
    'view_extensions' => [
            'input/longtext' => [
                    'tinymce/longtext' => [],
            ],
    ],
];

That’s it! Now every time someone uses input/longtext TinyMCE will be loaded and applied to that textarea.