Rule - MD034

Property	Value
Aliases	md034, no-bare-urls
Autofix Available	No*
Enabled By Default	Yes

Summary

Bare URL used.

Reasoning

Correctness

When text that looks like the start of a formal URL is seen by someone reading the document, that person will try and click on the text, thinking there is a link there unless other formatting exists to convince them otherwise.

Note that the various allowed forms of URLs and URIs is a very complex topic, and this rule only strives to address the most mainstream cases.

Examples

Failure Scenarios

This rule triggers if any one of the strings http:, https:, ftp:, or ftps: is encountered in the text and is followed by the string // and at least one non-whitespace character:

Markdown This link http://www.google.com should not exist without extra markers.

The text searched is any text belonging to a Paragraph element, an Atx Heading element, or a SetExt Heading element, except for any text specifically belonging to a Link element or an Image element.

Correct Scenarios

This rule does not trigger if there is any non-whitespace character directly before the formal URL:

```Markdown "http://www.google.com" is the name of the movie.

$http://www.google.com is the name of the command. ```

In addition, this rule does not trigger if the text is present with a Fenced Block element:

Markdown ```Python s = "http://www.google.com" ```

an Indented Code Block element:

Markdown s = "http://www.google.com"

a HTML Block element:

````Markdown

````

or a Link element:

Markdown [a http://www.google.com link](/url)

Fix Description

This rule can often be disabled in favor of enabling the Extended Autolink extension. While that extension does not provide support for the ftp and ftps schemes, it does support both the http and https schemes. With the use of FTP services to store data being on the decline, our team decided not to create a fix for this rule, as the extension provides a solid alternative that addresses the issue.

However, even if we assume that the extension is not enabled, there is still a question of context. While we have the link destination for a link, there is not enough context to determine what the link's label should contain. As with the fix option on other rules, the author is the best entity to determine the link label's context.

Configuration

Prefixes
plugins.md034.
plugins.no-bare-urls.

Value Name	Type	Default	Description
enabled	boolean	True	Whether the Rule Plugin is enabled.

Origination of Rule

This rule is largely inspired by the MarkdownLint rule MD034.

Differences From MarkdownLint Rule

There are two main differences between the original rule and this rule.

The first difference is in the requirements for finding an eligible URL to trigger on. In the description for the original rule, significant time is spent describing the various bounding characters that negate the firing of that rule. To supply a similar effect but in a simpler manner, this rule just checks for a single non-whitespace character preceding the found URL.

The second difference is in this documentation. The original rule's documentation focused mostly on what would not trigger the rule. In this description of the rule, effort has been made to clearly specify when this rule triggers and simplify the description of when this rule will not trigger.