zulip/help/add-a-custom-linkifier.md

Add a custom linkifier

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Linkifiers make it easy to refer to issues or tickets in third party issue trackers, like GitHub, Salesforce, Zendesk, and others. For instance, you can add a linkifier that automatically turns #2468 into a link to https://github.com/zulip/zulip/issues/2468.

Linkifiers use RFC 6570 compliant URL templates to represent the link to be generated from the pattern.

If the pattern appears in a topic, Zulip adds an Open () button to the right of the topic in the message recipient bar that links to the appropriate URL.

Add a custom linkifier

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{settings_tab|linkifier-settings}

1. Under Add a new linkifier, enter a Pattern and URL template.

2. Click Add linkifier.

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Understanding linkification patterns

This is best explained by example.

Hash followed by a number of any length.

• Pattern: #(?P<id>[0-9]+)
• URL template: https://github.com/zulip/zulip/issues/{id}
• Original text: #2468
• Automatically links to: https://github.com/zulip/zulip/issues/2468

String of hexadecimal digits between 7 and 40 characters long.

• Pattern: (?P<id>[0-9a-f]{7,40})
• URL template: https://github.com/zulip/zulip/commit/{id}
• Original text: abdc123
• Automatically links to: https://github.com/zulip/zulip/commit/abcd123

Generic GitHub org/repo#ID format:

• Pattern: (?P<org>[a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)/(?P<repo>[a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)#(?P<id>[0-9]+)
• URL template: https://github.com/{org}/{repo}/issues/{id}
• Original text: zulip/zulip#2468
• Automatically links to: https://github.com/zulip/zulip/issues/2468

Linkifier patterns are regular expressions, using the re2 regular expression engine.

If you have any trouble setting these up, please contact us with details on what you're trying to do, and we'll be happy to help you out.