Bulk Send Email links cannot contain directories that exist

ThaMunsta

I just updated to v25.02. I wanted to use bulk send to update clients about the new portal URL. When testing I found no matter what I tried the client portal URL would end up broken. I thought it was maybe click track rewrites or something in SMTP but the more I tested the more I found it ONLY happened when the URL contained install domain.

For example. Lets assume ITFlow is installed to https://support.awesomeit.com/ and I would want to notify users of the new client portal: https://support.awesomeit.com/client/login.php - that URL ends up /client/login.php

Steps to reproduce:

Login and navigate to Client Overview (/contacts.php)
Tick the box for yourself as a contact and click bulk action in the top right; choose Send Email
Press CTRL+K to insert a new link and paste in the URL of your client portal in both URL and Text to display fields. (I chose no title and current window settings)
Check your email and test the link to see if it works.

And I can confirm it's going into the mail_queue table as <a href="client/login.php"> for example so I feel less insane now. It seems to be with tinyMCE and that tinymce.init might need convert_urls:false added. I tried adding it to app.js and it worked for that one page but I know it's in a couple places - not sure where it may or may not be appropriate. For now I've added it everywhere I found except for a preview init.

Bigbug

ThaMunsta yup.. deff a bug :/

Tagging @johnny on this

ThaMunsta

Reading through the tinyMCE docs the other option in init is relative_urls: false so all links are absolute path even if you try to use a relative path link. The convert_urls: false option seems to allow relative path URLs if you choose to use them but wont convert them if you don't. In most places on the site it won't matter if its relative or absolute but email will need the full path for sure.

For convert_urls the docs are a little funny. It seems to literally say the default is they get messed up 😂

This option enables you to control whether TinyMCE is to be smart and restore URLs to their original values. URLs are automatically converted (messed up) by default because the browser’s built-in logic works this way

johnny

Thats pretty wild. Although im not able to replicate on my end, it might be that i'm using Firefox. What browsers are you guys using by chance

Bigbug

johnny the issue only occurs in the actual email you get, not in the itflow mail queue.

ThaMunsta

Well, yes and no. You can actually see it in the mail queue (both database and UI) but because of the way browsers resolve relative links you wont notice unless you check the soure. I put a test in demo:
https://demo.itflow.org/admin_mail_queue.php?q=url+test&canned_date=&dtf=&dtt=2025-02-27

This link looks right and behaves right in browser but because of the link being href="client_overview.php?client_id=153" with no domain it wont work externally and absolutely wont work in email.

I've been testing with convert_urls: false in all the tinymce.init I've found and so far everything seems good. I don't even think there are any downsides other than "extra" characters stored in the database. Sometimes they are necessary so I don't totally see this as a drawback unless someone migrated their ITFlow install to a new domain - could be a PITA to fix old links if they use them in client documents. So even just adding it to the tinymce.init on bulk email and any other TinyMCE input email pages would be good enough.

johnny

Nice find @ThaMunsta Ill push out a fix for the tommarow maint release

johnny

Just pushed out a fix here should be in tomorrow release

itflow-org/itflow6f49f16