PostResponse::Paragraph's that are of type IFRAME have extra data in the
iframe attribute to specify what's in the iframe. Not all data is the
same, however. I've identified three types and am using the new
EmbeddedConverter class to convert them:
* EmbeddedContent, the full iframe experience
* GithubGist, because medium or github treat embeds differently for
whatever reason
* EmbeddedLink, the old style, just a link to the content. Effectively
a fallback
The size of the original iframe is also specified as an attribute. This
code resizes it. The resizing is determined by figuring out the
width/height ratio and setting the width to 800.
EmbeddedContent can be displayed if we have an embed.ly url, which most
iframe response data has. GitHub gists are a notable exception. Gists
instead can be embedded simply by taking the gist URL and attaching .js
to the end. That becomes the iframe's src attribute.
The PostResponse::Paragraph's iframe attribute is nillable. Previous
code used lots of if-statements with variable bindings to work with the
possible nil values:
```crystal
if foo = obj.nillable_value
# obj.nillable_value was not nil and foo contains the value
else
# obj.nillable_value was nil so do something else
end
```
See https://crystal-lang.org/reference/syntax_and_semantics/if_var.html
for more info
In the EmbeddedConverter the monads library has been introduced to get
rid of at least one level of nillability. This wraps values in Maybe
which allows for a cleaner interface:
```crystal
Monads::Try(Value).new(->{ obj.nillable_value })
.to_maybe
.fmap(->(value: Value) { # do something with value })
.value_or(# value was nil, do something else)
```
This worked to get the iframe attribute from a Paragraph:
```crystal
Monads::Try(PostResponse::IFrame).new(->{ paragraph.iframe })
.to_maybe
.fmap(->(iframe : PostResponse::IFrame) { # iframe is not nil! })
.fmap(#and so on)
.value_or(Empty.new)
```
iframe only has one attribute: mediaResource which contains the iframe
data. That was used to determine one of the three types above.
Finally, Tufte.css has options for iframes. They mostly look good except
for tweets which are too small and weirdly in the center of the page
which actually looks off-center. That's for another day though.
The API responds with a bunch of paragraphs which the client converts
into Paragraph objects.
This turns the paragraphs in a PostResponse's Paragraph objects into the
form needed to render them on a page. This includes converting flat list
elements into list elements nested by a UL. And adding a limited markups
along the way.
The array of paragraphs is passed to a recursive function. The function
takes the first paragraph and either wraps the (marked up) contents in a
container tag (like Paragraph or Heading3), and then moves onto the next
tag. If it finds a list, it starts parsing the next paragraphs as a list
instead.
Originally, this was implemented like so:
```crystal
paragraph = paragraphs.shift
if list?
convert_list([paragraph] + paragraphs)
end
```
However, passing the `paragraphs` after adding it to the already shifted
`paragraph` creates a new object. This means `paragraphs` won't be
mutated and once the list is parsed, it starts with the next element of
the list. Instead, the element is `shift`ed inside each converter.
```crystal
if paragraphs.first == list?
convert_list(paragraphs)
end
def convert_list(paragraphs)
paragraph = paragraphs.shift
# ...
end
```
When rendering, there is an Empty and Container object. These represent
a kind of "null object" for both leafs and parent objects respectively.
They should never actually render. Emptys are filtered out, and
Containers are never created explicitly but this will make the types
pass.
IFrames are a bit of a special case. Each IFrame has custom data on it
that this system would need to be aware of. For now, instead of trying
to parse the seemingly large number of iframe variations and dealing
with embedded iframe problems, this will just keep track of the source
page URL and send the user there with a link.
Fabio Manganiello
Edward Loveall