[Feature Request]: Migrate Self Referential Links on Copy

[Arcynic49]

Describe the feature you'd like

I document a software product for work, and initially skipped over considering migrating to BookStack (from Confluence) because of the lack of copy functionality. One workflow I needed to be able to use was copying the documentation for one version into a new version, and then changing the sections that were updated in the new version. With the recent release of copy book/chapter functionality, I've started getting ready to use BookStack (it is very well made) but I've noticed that the copy functionality isn't working exactly how I hoped.

While the copy does in fact create a new fully copy of everything, any self-referential links do not get updated in the new copy. It would be desirable for these links to point to the new copy rather than the original. By way of example (meant to be illustrative, not how I'm structuring stuff currently):

• Book- Introduction
  • Page- Landing Page
  • Page- Products
  • Page- FAQs
• Book- Software Version 1.0
  • Page- Release Notes, has link to Book-Introduction/Page-Products
  • Page- Installation, has link to Book-Software Version 1.0/Page-Release Notes
  • Page- User Guide, has links to Book-Software Version 1.0/Page-Admin Guide
  • Page- Admin Guide

If you perform a copy of Book- Software Version 1.0 to version 2.0, the section below shows the results (actual links in bold, desired in italics):

• Book- Software Version 2.0
  • Page- Release Notes, has link to Book-Introduction/Page-Products (this is desired)
  • Page- Installation, has link to Book-Software Version 1.0/Page-Release Notes (should be Book-Software Version 2.0/Page-Release Notes)
  • Page- User Guide, has links to Book-Software Version 1.0/Page-Admin Guide (should be Book-Software Version 2.0/Page-Admin Guide)
  • Page- Admin Guide

This example shows it for a book, but the logic conceptually applies to chapter copies as well as page copies (if there happen to be links on a page referring to itself). Anything linked via permalink should naturally be exempt from these rules.

Describe the benefits this feature would bring to BookStack users

Ideally this would enable faster updates of content following a copy operation, as you would not need to manually update links that the copy has that are meant to refer to itself-as-a-copy and not the original-prior-to-copy. Since this logic only applies to copy operations and not moves, it is thus hopefully more contained and useful.

Additional context

No response

[weiyuemin]

I have exactly the same condition, hope this feature..

[bourdaisj]

Hi, I started taking a look at this

[bourdaisj]

I stumbled across this TinyMCE feature the other day.
maybe when the link is added we could figure out it is referencing some sibling items, insert the link as "relative" (?) and use the url_converter to generate the correct link based on the item parent. Don't know if I'm being clear on this, apologies if I'm not.
I think I prefer just rewriting the links on the backend when we perform the item copy but I thought it would be worth mentioning this solution as well. @ssddanbrown wdyt?

[ssddanbrown]

@Julesdevops I would prefer that any logic for this is kept to the back-end, and that we don't rely on any TinyMCE features. There are three potential editors to consider, TinyMCE, Markdown Editor and API (Markdown or HTML input). I don't want to add TinyMCE logic that we'd need to emulate elsewhere. I generally look to keep user content as "dumb" and "magic-free" as possible to keep it somewhat portable; that extends to relative links. Using full absolute links gives us firm patterns to relatively confidently match on, while being functional outside of their original intended context.

[bourdaisj]

@ssddanbrown agree on this, thanks for the feedback

[ssddanbrown]

This has now been added within #5917 to be part of the next feature release.
Thanks @Arcynic49 for the original request, and thanks @bourdaisj for taking an earlier attempt at this.