Pull external images

[lordmatt]

Would it be possible to update external blogs to pull images from feeds so as to make the activity entry look more like a networked blog?

[boonebgorges]

It's possible in theory. We currently run feed content through strip_tags() before creating activity items. See

external-group-blogs/includes/bp-groups-externalblogs.php

Line 289 in 8ff3f78

$activity_content = '<div>' . strip_tags( bp_create_excerpt( $post['description'], 175 ) ) . '</div>';

. We also truncate feed content, so that we're only pulling in the first 175 characters.

There are some reasons for these restrictions. First, if we pulled in full content, it could potentially create a huge amount of visual bloat. Second, HTML tags can create problems if not closed correctly, or if they're otherwise invalid (though the use of bp_create_excerpt() mitigates this risk a bit). Third, there may be certain kinds of security risks to allowing HTML content of certain sorts. Fourth, allowing arbitrary HTML tags can throw off the layout of a page in various ways. Some of these items could probably be mitigated by having a fairly narrow whitelist of allowed HTML tags and attributes and/or running the text through some version of kses.

For the purposes of your local installation, you might consider testing all of this simply by removing the strip_tags() call in the line referenced above.

[boonebgorges]

Alternatively, I just noticed that there is a filter in place, which you could use as follows:

add_filter(
    'bp_groupblogs_activity_content',
    function( $content, $post ) {
        return '<div>' . bp_create_excerpt( $post['description'], 175 ) . '</div>';
    },
    10,
    2
);

In other words, you're reproducing the default behavior, minus the strip_tags() call.

I'll try to look into whether a broader change in the plugin itself is feasible.