dev.to Repo Recap from the Past Week

#changelog #meta #opensource

Hey, hey, hey! Welcome back to another Repo Recap, where we cover last week's contributions to this app's repo and the iOS repo. This edition is covering January 13 to January 19.

Features

Thanks to @rhymes, you can now export your comment data! Check out the changelog post and PR for all the details. Thanks, @rhymes!
- Link to PR
  
  Changelog: export comments
  
  rhymes ・ Jan 16 '19
  
  #meta #changelog
@link2twenty wrote up a JSFiddle Liquid tag to embed JSFiddle into your post or comment! Thanks, Andrew!
- Link to PR
  
  Changelog: JSFiddle Liquid Tags Now Live
  
  Andrew Bone ・ Jan 17 '19
  
  #meta #changelog
We've removed the bug reports form on the error page. We encourage you to create a GitHub issue if you run into an error! PR by @jess:
- Link to PR
In case you missed it, we now have reading times for articles! The final push was made by @ben. Check out the PR and changelog post for more details:
- Link to PR
  
  Changelog: Reading Time Now Displayed
  
  Ben Halpern for The DEV Team ・ Jan 14 '19
  
  #changelog #meta

Bug Fixes / Other Contributions

@nsebhastian added a "Maintaining Your Fork" section to our readme. Thanks, Nathan!
- Link to PR
I fixed some notifications request specs. Gladly accepting feedback even though it's merged. 😄
- Link to PR
@jess made some improvements to our internal tools. PRs below:
- updated unmatched mentor query
- update twitter validation and internal/articles query
@BogDAAAMN updated the installation documentation. Thanks, Bogdan!
- Link to PR
@lightalloy refactored the redirect from old username or organization slug. Glad to say that I learned something by looking at the changes. Thanks, Anna!
- Link to PR
@lightalloy also fixed a few issues that Rubocop (a Ruby linter) warned. Thanks again, Anna!
- Link to PR
@maestromac refactored our RSS reader, and should be easier to maintain:
- Link to PR
@ben made a few RSS improvements -- PRs below:
@rhymes made a small refactor by replacing .each with .find_each for ActiveRecord queries. Thanks, @rhymes!
- Link to PR
@jess wrote a test for invalid CAPTCHAs:
- Link to PR
@davefollett fixed a vulnerability with the CodePen tag. Thanks, Dave!
- Link to PR
@38elements removed an unnecessary CSS property. Thanks, @38elements!
- Link to PR
@rhymes made some "super small query optimizations." Thanks again, @rhymes!
- Link to PR

And in the iOS repo...

@StriderHND corrected the navigation color border. Thanks, Erick!
-Link to PR
@StriderHND also updated the NotificationCenter observer as recommended by Reachability instructions:
-Link to PR

New Issues / Discussions

@avocadoras requested support for Org mode syntax when writing posts. Thanks, @avocadoras!

Add Org mode syntax support for creating posts #1526

avocadoras posted on Jan 13, 2019

I'm used to using Org mode syntax for writing text. The current way of editing posts right now is only with Markdown. I like that there is a button for help, since I do not know many of the syntax for markdown.

So, I would like to add Org mode syntax as an option to edit text when writing new posts. Github currently supports this feature and can render Org mode texts. This feature would be very helpful for those of us used to Org mode syntax.

View on GitHub
@tiagomagalhaes requested a Reddit Liquid tag. Thanks, @tiagomagalhaes!

Reddit Liquid Tag #1536

tiagomsmagalhaes posted on Jan 14, 2019

Describe the solution you'd like It would be nice to have a liquid tag to integrate reddit submissions

Describe alternatives you've considered I haven't researched intensively but found that Reddit has an embedding mechanism (oEmbed ?)

Additional context A maybe useful GH wiki page about Reddit embedding.

View on GitHub
@michaeltharrington wrote up a detailed issue about allowing others to edit articles, as well as other thoughts on version control for your posts. It's an interesting idea, so check it out below:

Profile checkbox for "Allow edits to my articles" + musing on VC for articles #1539

michael-tharrington posted on Jan 14, 2019

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. Not exactly. As DEV grows, we should continuously think of ways we can improve the platform for contributors and readers. Through providing efficient ways to clean up grammar on the site, we make articles on dev.to more easily readable and help to improve the writing of/teach the writer(s) of the post.

Describe the solution you'd like In the short term, we should offer users the ability to check a box in their profile that says "Allow edits to my articles" which would then be displayed within the person's profile and viewable to admins only. The capability to edit articles is already available to admins, but this would just be a way for writer's to give the go ahead and say it's cool.

In the long term, I think it would be beneficial if we could open up the ability to edit articles to the community by creating a sort of version control system for writers and their writing. This way, any user could make a PR to fix a typo/wonky sentence structure/etc. in another user's post. (Perhaps, we'd only want to allow people that mutually follow each other to do this.) A writer could then view the edits made on their work and potentially okay them or not. This would be good because we'd be able to crowd source some of the work which would make the system more scalable. Basically, I'm imagining a system that would highlight any changes an editor were to make and then ask the author if they're okay with merging them.

Describe alternatives you've considered As far as editing work goes, so long as someone has admin permissions, they're able to edit content. For instance, I have admin permissions and I've considered reaching out to authors via email and asking them if I can grammatically correct a few things in their work. I haven't really done this though because it seems like too much overhead. Admittedly, I've hopped in a post a few times just to clean up some blatant mistakes that I figured I was safe doing.

I'm also aware that some folks have requested mentors to help with their writing. This is another potential path to take for helping authors that need help with grammar.

Additional context Here's a screenshot of where I think the "Allow edits to my articles" checkbox might go:

https://cl.ly/053b8bb7d5bd/Image%202019-01-14%20at%202.31.17%20PM.png

... but, I'm totally open to other thoughts on that!

View on GitHub
We currently have a few bugs that are reported by Airbrake, our bug monitoring service. It's a run time error, and should be fairly fixable. Check it out below:
[Airbrake] [Production] undefined method `cl_image_path' for CloudinaryHelper:Module #1541
benhalpern posted on Jan 14, 2019
Airbrake error: #9865 Airbrake project: practicaldev

Error type: ActionView::Template::Error Error message: undefined method `cl_image_path' for CloudinaryHelper:Module Where: additional_content_boxes#index Occurred at: Jan 14, 2019 22:49:47 UTC First seen at: Jan 04, 2019 19:42:39 UTC Occurrences: 8086 (174 since last deploy on Jan 14, 2019 21:19:45 UTC) Severity: error

URL: http://dev.to/additional_content_boxes?article_id=69382%2C578&signature=15475 File: /PROJECT_ROOT/app/views/additional_content_boxes/_article_followable_area.html.erb

Backtrace:
```
/PROJECT_ROOT/app/views/additional_content_boxes/_article_followable_area.html.erb:4:in _app_views_additional_content_boxes__article_followable_area_html_erb__1416202628230001255_70357272411600
/GEM_ROOT/gems/actionview-5.1.6.1/lib/action_view/template.rb:157:in block in render
/GEM_ROOT/gems/activesupport-5.1.6.1/lib/active_support/notifications.rb:168:in instrument
/GEM_ROOT/gems/actionview-5.1.6.1/lib/action_view/template.rb:352:in instrument_render_template
...
Caused by NoMethodError: undefined method `cl_image_path' for CloudinaryHelper:Module
```
View on GitHub
@dylan reported an issue with the edit comment box not resizing properly. Thanks, Dylan!
Edit comment box not resizing #1554
dylanking42 posted on Jan 15, 2019
Browser extensions disabled.

Describe the bug I believe that the edit comment functionality available at the URL: https://dev.to/**username**/comment/**commentID**/edit is not letting me resize the edit comment box to display multi line comments.

To Reproduce Steps to reproduce the behavior:
1. Write a multi line comment and post it.
2. Click on 'edit comment'
3. the page does not look like what I believe it is intended to look like.
Expected behavior I would expect the edit comment functionality to allow me to resize the window, or at least expand the edit comment window text area box to fill the page. Behavior similar to this was mentioned in #47 which makes me believe this is an error.

Screenshots If applicable, add screenshots to help explain your problem. Notice the large gap in between the footer and the text comment edit box.

Desktop (please complete the following information):
- OS: [e.g. iOS] Windows Version 10.0.16299 Build 16299
- Browser [e.g. chrome, safari] FF 64.0 32 bit // IE 11.0.101
Smartphone (please complete the following information): n/a

Additional context

This was tested on both vertical and horizontal monitor orientations. The text edit window is still rather small by default.
</div> <div class="gh-btn-container"><a class="gh-btn" href="https://github.com/thepracticaldev/dev.to/issues/1554">View on GitHub</a></div>
@nickytonline requested a feature for user profiles. When visiting a mutual follower, there is a CTA for you to start a new Connect conversation with them. Thanks, Nick!

As a user of the dev.to community, I would like a call to action on the profile of someone I follow, to facilitate beginning/continuing a conversation with them. #1567

nickytonline posted on Jan 16, 2019

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. As a user of the dev.to community, I would like a call to action on the profile of someone I follow, to facilitate beginning/continuing a conversation with them.

Describe the solution you'd like The motivation for this is quick access to starting a conversation with someone if you follow them and happen to be on their profile. As well, someone with more than a handful of followers is currently unable to find a user easily in dev connect.

To compliment this story, consider a lookup field on the dev connect page so a user could filter who they're looking for quickly. Also, as shown in the picture, I'd make the "Following" button a less prominent action than the "Chat" button. Also, I'm not sure about the wording "Chat"

Describe alternatives you've considered N/A

Additional context Add any other context or screenshots about the feature request here.

View on GitHub

@damian reported a bug where comments are overlapping in Edge. Thanks, Damian!
Comments overlapping in Edge #1593
kingdamian42 posted on Jan 18, 2019
Describe the bug When using Edge, some comments render as overlapping eachother

To Reproduce Steps to reproduce the behavior:
1. Go to https://dev.to/ilonacodes/frontend-developers-do-you-want-to-transition-to-fullstack-why-44b9 in Edge
2. Scroll down to the first child comments under "Xander"'s comment.
3. See error
Expected behavior The comments should not overlap while using Edge.

Screenshots Example of issue: https://imgur.com/a/IW3sbEG

Desktop (please complete the following information):
- OS: Windows 10
- Browser: Edge
- Version: Microsoft Edge 42.17134.1.0
View on GitHub