Current version: 1.3.0.wicket{6|7} for Wicket 6.x, 7.x (CHANGELOG)

Extensible Autolinking for Wicket

Wicket can autolink resources referenced in HTML markup files, for example images and CSS files that are reachable relative to the markup file.

This only works with resources on the classpath, not in the webapp context (the "webapp folder"). Generally, one should indeed use classpath resources instead of context resources, because that way components are much more easily packageable. There are situations where one might want to still reference context resources, such as migration scenarios where some resources might still need to live in the webapp context for the sake of legacy components.

You only get to use the predefined tags and attributes for the autolinking, such as img/src or a/href. With Extensible Autolinker, you can add your own tag/attribute combinations, for example object/data.

Unfortunately, Wicket autolinking also only works with relative paths, because absolute paths (starting with "/") are rejected. Again, in general, this is a good thing, because resource files should live close to the components using them. There can be commonly used files though, like basic icons (arrow up, down, open, close, ok, cancel, etc) that are used in many places. It can be practical to put these in a common package near the root of the classpath, for example /resources/img/ or something like that.

The Extensible Autolinker allows all the normal operations that Wicket autolinking provides plus a few more. To distinguish the new variants, they all use path prefixes:

• Refer to classpath resources starting from the classpath root by prefixing with cp:/
• Resources paths in the the context root ("webapp folder") are prefixed with ctx:/
• Define custom prefixes starting at arbitrary packages in your classpath.

All this is done in HTML and CSS files.

Autolinking of url() in CSS files is only partially available in the version for Wicket 1.5.x, because Wicket's own CssUrlReplacer is only available in Wicket 6. Only autolinking of resources with a prefix known by ExtensibleAutolinker will work in Wicket 1.5.x.

How to use

To activate, simply configure ExtensibleAutolinker in your Application#init() method like this:

ExtensibleAutolinker.configure(this);

This method also returns the instance of ExtensibleAutolinker that you can then use to add additional classpath scopes:

ExtensibleAutolinker autolinker = ExtensibleAutolinker.configure(this);
autolinker.addScopePrefix(SomeClass.class, "sc");

You can now refer to paths relative to SomeClass in the classpath by using the prefix "sc:/", in addition to the.

You can also add your own tag/attribute combinations:

autolinker.setAttributesFor("object", "data");

Maven coordinates

<dependency>
    <groupId>de.wicketbuch.extensions</groupId>
    <artifactId>extensible-autolinking</artifactId>
    <version>...</version>
</dependency>

Make sure you choose the correct version for the version of Wicket you are using, they are suffixed with .wicket5, .wicket6, .wicket7 respectively.

This project uses Semantic Versioning, so you can rely on things not breaking within a major version.