Making a promiscuous TinyMCE abstain

By John, 24 March, 2008

Here’s a quick one if you are in need of a noon-time distraction. If you’ve ever used the WYSIWYG editor TinyMCE, called “tiny mice” by some, then you know that it likes to hook() up with every </code> that it sees.</p> <p>The results of this promiscuity range from annoying (<em>I don’t need a HTML editor for a log message!</em>) to the disastrous (<em>?*$! That HTML editor just stripped the newlines from my list of pages in “Page specific visibility settings!” Oh, the humanity!</em>)</p>  <p>The fix for this is hinted at in the docs of TinyMCE. You can specify a list of named <code>textarea</code>s for TinyMCE to ignore from inside the theme function, <code>phptempate_tinymce_theme()</code>. For each named <code><textarea></code>, you can unset the TinyMCE <code>$init</code>. Which is somewhat useful, but everytime you add a new module, you’ll find a new list of <code><textarea></code>s that get screwed up.</p> <p>However, to really control TinyMCE, we can turn that logic on its head. If we use that theme function to specify a list of named <code><textarea></code>s that will pass untouched through the function (meaning TinyMCE will hook up with them) and unset the TinyMCE init for all other <code><textarea></code>s. Here’s the code:</p> <?php /** * Theme the TinyMCE module (an implementation of theme_tinymce_theme()) * * @param $init * @param $textarea_name * @param $theme_name * @param $is_running * @return * Initialization array. */ function phptemplate_tinymce_theme($init, $textarea_name, $theme_name, $is_running) { switch ($textarea_name) { // Enable tinymce for these textareas case 'body': case 'comment': break; // Disable by default default: unset($init); break; } // Always return $init return $init; } ?> <p>And voila! TinyMCE will now only hook up with node bodies, block bodies and comments.</p>

Topics: Drupal, TinyMCE

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Comments3

Something similar

Hey I've done something similar, and I notice your code removes the logic in the default theme_tinymce_theme(). You might be better off calling it instead of simply using $init untouched. Here's what I've used...

<?php
/**
* Override theme_tinymce_theme. This control which textareas have
* the tinymce editor applied to them. See tinymce module README.TXT
* for more information.
*/
function phptemplate_tinymce_theme($init, $textarea_name, $theme_name, $is_running) {
// default theme_tinymce_theme enables tinymce by default, and
// supresses on certain textareas. Our implementation disables by
// default, and allows only on the following textareas.
if (in_array($textarea_name, array('body',
'formnode-data-submit-body',
'mn-data-header',
'mn-data-footer',
'signature',
'site_mission',
'site_footer',
'site_offline_message',
'page_help',
'user_registration_help',
'user_picture_guidelines',
))) {
// Prevent tinymce from mucking up our paths
$init['convert_urls'] = 'false';
$returnMe = theme_tinymce_theme($init, $textarea_name, $theme_name, $is_running);
return $returnMe;
}
else
// disable tinymce
return NULL;
}
?>

I've used tinymce on only one project and don't plan to ever use it again. It has nasty habits like inserting silly <br type="_moz" /> tags.

By design

The only logic that theme_tinymce_theme() performs is “Force the 'simple' theme for some of the smaller textareas.” But my function only enables TinyMCE for 3 textareas, and none of them are in that list of “smaller textareas” so its totally unnecessary to call it.

But if anyone is thinking of using the technique I outlined, they should, of course, review the theme_tinymce_theme() code in the tinymce.module file.

Even usually don't use

Even usually don't use tinymce, this could be really nice trick.
Thanks.