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Introduction

Transformation of content between the database and an RTE is needed if the format of the content in the database is different than the format understood by an RTE. A simple example could be that bold-tags in the database <b> should be converted to <strong> tags in the RTE or that references to images in <img> tags in the database should be relative while absolute in the RTE. In such cases a transformation is needed to do the conversion both ways: from database (DB) to RTE and from RTE to DB.

Generally transformations are needed for two reasons:

  • Data Formats: If the agreed format of the stored content in TYPO3 is different from the HTML format the RTE produces. This could be issues like XHTML, banning of certain tags or maybe a hybrid format in the database. (See section 3 in the illustration some pages ahead)

  • RTE specifics: If the RTE has special requirements to the content before it can be edited and if that format is different from what we want to store in the database. For instance an RTE could require a full HTML document with <html>, <head> and <body> - obviously we don't want that in the database and likewise we will have to wrap content in such a dummy-body before it can be edited.

Hybrid modes

Many of the transformations performed back and forth in the TYPO3 backend date back to when it was a challenge to incorporate a RTE in a browser. It was then sometimes needed to fall back an a simple <textarea> where rich text had to be presented in a simple enough way so that editors could work with it with no visual help.

This is what the mode css_transform tries to achieve: maintain a data format that is as human readable as possible while still offering an RTE for editing if applicable.

To know the details of those transformations, please refer to the Transformation overview. Here is a short example of a hybrid mode:

In Database

This is how the content in the database could look for a hybrid mode (such as css_transform):

1This is line number 1 with a <link 123>link</link> inside
2This is line number 2 with a <b>bold part</b> in the text
3<p align="center">This line is centered.</p>
4This line is just plain

As you can see the TYPO3-specific tag, <link> is used for the link to page 123. This tag is designed to be easy for editors to insert. It is of course converted to a real <a> tag when the page is rendered in the frontend. Further line 2 shows bold text. In line 3 the situation is that the paragraph should be centered - and there seems to be no other way than wrapping the line in a <p> tag with the "align" attribute. Not so human readable but we can do no better without an RTE. Line 4 is just plain.

Generally this content will be processed before output on a page of course. Typically the rule will be this: "Wrap each line in a <p> tag which is not already wrapped in a <p> tag and convert all TYPO3-specific <link>-tags to real <a> tags." and thus the final result will be valid HTML.

In RTE

The content in the database can easily be edited as plain text thanks to the "hybrid-mode" used to store the content. But when the content above from the database has to go into the RTE it will not work if every line is not wrapped in a <p> tag! The same is true for the <link> tag, which has to be converted for the RTE to understand it. This is what eventually goes into the RTE:

<p>This is line number 1 with a <a href="index.php?id=123">link</a> inside</p>
<p>This is line number 2 with a <strong>bold part</strong> in the text</p>
<p align="center">This line is centered.</p>
<p>This line is just plain</p>

This process of conversion from one format to the other is what transformations do!

Configuration

In addition transformations can be fine-tuned by Page TSconfig which means that RTE behaviour can be determined even on page branch level!

Where transformations are performed

The transformations you can do with TYPO3 are done in the class \TYPO3\CMS\Core\Html\RteHtmlParser. There is typically a function for each direction; From DB to RTE (suffixed _rte) and from RTE to DB (suffixed _db).

The transformations are invoked in two cases:

  • Before content enters the editing form This is done by the RTE API itself, calling the method \TYPO3\CMS\Backend\Rte\AbstractRte::transformContent().

  • Before content is saved in the database This is done in \TYPO3\CMS\Core\DataHandling\DataHandler class and the transformation is triggered by a pseudo- field from the submitted form! This field is added by the RTE API (calling \TYPO3\CMS\Backend\Rte\AbstractRte::triggerField()). Lets say the fieldname is data[tt_content][456][bodytext] then the trigger field is named data[tt_content][456][_TRANSFORM_bodytext] and in \TYPO3\CMS\Core\DataHandling\DataHandler this pseudo-field will be detected and used to trigger the transformation process from RTE to DB. Of course the pseudo field will never go into the database (since it is not found in $TCA).

The rationale for transformations is discussed in Historical perspective on RTE transformations.