Autolink Plugin

Maintainer: @levb Co-Maintainer: @iomodo

This plugin creates regular expression (regexp) patterns that are reformatted into a Markdown link before the message is saved into the database.

Use it to add custom auto-linking on your Mattermost system, such as adding links to your issue tracker based on the regexp patterns.

Posting a message containing a Jira issue key..

..automatically links to the corresponding issue in the Jira project

Configuration

1. Go to System Console > Plugins > Management and click Enable to enable the Autolink plugin.

   • If you are running Mattermost v5.11 or earlier, you must first go to the releases page of this GitHub repository, download the latest release, and upload it to your Mattermost instance following this documentation.

2. Modify your config.json file to include the types of regexp patterns you wish to match, under the PluginSettings. See below for an example of what this should look like.

Tip: There are useful Regular Expression tools online to help test and validate that your formulas are working as expected. One such tool is Regex101 . Here is an example Regular Expression to capture a post that includes a VISA card number - which you could then obfuscate with the Pattern so people don't accidentally share sensitive info in your channels.

Usage

Autolinks have 3 parts: a Pattern which is a regular expression search pattern utilizing the Golang regexp library, a Template that gets expanded and an optional Scope parameter to define which team/channel the autolink applies to. You can create variables in the pattern with the syntax (?P<name>...) which will then be expanded by the corresponding template.

In the template, a variable is denoted by a substring of the form $name or ${name}, where name is a non-empty sequence of letters, digits, and underscores. A purely numeric name like $1 refers to the submatch with the corresponding index. In the $name form, name is taken to be as long as possible: $1x is equivalent to ${1x}, not ${1}x, and, $10 is equivalent to ${10}, not ${1}0. To insert a literal $ in the output, use $$ in the template.

The scope must be either a team (teamname) or a team and a channel (teamname/channelname). Remember that you must provide the entity name, not the entity display name. Since Direct Messages do not belong to any team, scoped matches will not be autolinked on Direct Messages. If more than one scope is provided, matches in at least one of the scopes will be autolinked.

Below is an example of regexp patterns used for autolinking at https://community.mattermost.com, modified in the config.json file:

"PluginSettings": {
    ...
    "Plugins": {
        "mattermost-autolink": {
            "links": [
                {
                    "Pattern": "(LHS)",
                    "Template": "[LHS](https://docs.mattermost.com/process/training.html#lhs)",
                    "Scope": ["team/off-topic"]
                },
                {
                    "Pattern": "(RHS)",
                    "Template": "[RHS](https://docs.mattermost.com/process/training.html#rhs)",
                    "Scope": ["team/town-square"]
                },
                {
                    "Pattern": "(?i)(Mana)",
                    "Template": "[Mana](https://docs.mattermost.com/process/training.html#mana)"
                },
                {
                    "Pattern": "(?i)(ESR)",
                    "Template": "[ESR](https://docs.mattermost.com/process/training.html#esr)"
                },
                {
                    "Pattern": "((?P<level>0|1|2|3|4|5)/5)",
                    "Template": "[${level}/5](https://docs.mattermost.com/process/training.html#id8)"
                },
                {
                    "Pattern": "(MM)(-)(?P<jira_id>\\d+)",
                    "Template": "[MM-${jira_id}](https://mattermost.atlassian.net/browse/MM-${jira_id})"
                },
                {
                    "Pattern": "https://pre-release\\.mattermost\\.com/core/pl/(?P<id>[a-zA-Z0-9]+)",
                    "Template": "[<jump to convo>](https://pre-release.mattermost.com/core/pl/${id})"
                },
                {
                    "Pattern": "(https://mattermost\\.atlassian\\.net/browse/)(MM)(-)(?P<jira_id>\\d+)",
                    "Template": "[MM-${jira_id}](https://mattermost.atlassian.net/browse/MM-${jira_id})"
                },
                {
                    "Pattern": "https://github\\.com/mattermost/(?P<repo>.+)/pull/(?P<id>\\d+)",
                    "Template": "[pr-${repo}-${id}](https://github.com/mattermost/${repo}/pull/${id})"
                },
                {
                    "Pattern": "https://github\\.com/mattermost/(?P<repo>.+)/issues/(?P<id>\\d+)",
                    "Template": "[issue-${repo}-${id}](https://github.com/mattermost/${repo}/issues/${id})"
                },
                {
                    "Pattern": "(PLT)(-)(?P<jira_id>\\d+)",
                    "Template": "[PLT-${jira_id}](https://mattermost.atlassian.net/browse/PLT-${jira_id})"
                },
                {
                    "Pattern": "(https://mattermost\\.atlassian\\.net/browse/)(PLT)(-)(?P<jira_id>\\d+)",
                    "Template": "[PLT-${jira_id}](https://mattermost.atlassian.net/browse/PLT-${jira_id})"
                }
            ]
        },
    },
    ...
    "PluginStates": {
        ...
        "mattermost-autolink": {
            "Enable": true
        },
        ...
    }
},

Examples

1. Autolinking Ticket ####:text with alphanumberic characters and spaces to a ticket link. Use:

   • Pattern: (?i)(ticket )(?P<ticket_id>.+)(:)(?P<ticket_info>.*), or if the ticket_id is a number, then (?i)(ticket )(?P<ticket_id>\d+)(:)(?P<ticket_info>.*)
   • Template: [Ticket ${ticket_id}: ${ticket_info}](https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost-server/issues/${ticket_id})
   • Scope: ["teams/committers"] (optional)

2. Autolinking a link to a GitHub PR to a format "pr-repo-id". Use:

   • Pattern: https://github\\.com/mattermost/(?P<repo>.+)/pull/(?P<id>\\d+)
   • Template: [pr-${repo}-${id}](https://github.com/mattermost/${repo}/pull/${id})

3. Using autolinking to create group mentions. Use (note that clicking the resulting at-mention redirects to a broken page):

   • Pattern: @customgroup*
   • Template: [@customgroup]( \\* @user1 @user2 @user3 \\* )

4. For servers with multiple domains (like community and community-daily on the public Mattermost Server), a substitution of absolute conversation links to relative links is recommended to prevent issues in the mobile app. Add one pattern for each domain used:

   • Pattern: https://community\\.mattermost\\.com/(?P\u003cteamname\u003e(?a-zA-Z0-9]+)/(?P\u003cid\u003e[a-zA-Z0-9]+)
   • Template: [<jump to convo>](/${teamname}/pl/${id})/${id})

Autolink the word Handbook to a internal URL on the private team (called office), and a private channel (staff) in the public team (called everyone). - Pattern: (Handbook) - Template: [Handbook](http://www.mywebsite.com/private/handbook) - Scope: ["office", "everyone/staff"]

You can check your pattern with those Regex Testers:

• https://regex-golang.appspot.com/,
• https://regex101.com/,
• https://www.regextester.com/.

Configuration Management

The /autolink commands allow the users to easily edit the configurations.

Development

This plugin contains a server portion.

Use make dist to build distributions of the plugin that you can upload to a Mattermost server. Use make check-style to check the style. Use make deploy to deploy the plugin to your local server.

For additional information on developing plugins, refer to our plugin developer documentation.