Spaces in markdown URLs break markdown URL rendering

[atseewal]

Prework

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Description

Links with spaces used in markdown formatted columns don't render as links.

Reproducible example

(A slightly modified version of one of the examples)

I create links to an API where parameters sometimes contain spaces. This example shows the undesired rendering.

from great_tables import GT, html
from great_tables.data import towny

towny_mini = (
    towny[["name", "website", "density_2021", "land_area_km2", "latitude", "longitude"]]
    .sort_values("density_2021", ascending=False)
    .head(10)
)

towny_mini["url_name"] = ["["] + towny_mini["name"] + ["]"] + ["("] + towny_mini["website"] + [")"]

towny_mini["location"] = (
    ["[map](http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&hq=&ll="]
    + towny_mini["latitude"].astype(str)
    + [","]
    + towny_mini["longitude"].astype(str)
    
    # Adding example attribute that contains a space
    + ["&z=13&spaced attr=True)"]
)

(
    GT(
        towny_mini[["url_name", "location", "land_area_km2", "density_2021"]],
        rowname_col="url_name",
    )
    .tab_header(
        title="The Municipalities of Ontario",
        subtitle="The top 10 highest population density in 2021",
    )
    .tab_stubhead(label="Municipality")
    .fmt_markdown(columns=["url_name", "location"])
    .fmt_number(columns=["land_area_km2", "density_2021"], decimals=1)
    .cols_label(
        land_area_km2=html("land area, <br>km<sup>2</sup>"),
        density_2021=html("density, <br>people/km<sup>2</sup>"),
    )
)

Expected result

Development environment

• Operating System: Databricks, Google Colab
• Pointblank Version: 0.18.0 (Databricks), 0.19.0 (Colab)

Additional context

I have only run into the issue with spaces so far. I'm not sure if there are any other characters that should be encoded for the URI based on the markdown's link capabilities.

I looked at gt-extras' with_hypterlink function as well, it doesn't appear to handle this scenario.

I have been using the following workaround for spaces. I just replace the spaces with %20 and links work as expected.

from great_tables import GT, html
from great_tables.data import towny

towny_mini = (
    towny[["name", "website", "density_2021", "land_area_km2", "latitude", "longitude"]]
    .sort_values("density_2021", ascending=False)
    .head(10)
)

towny_mini["url_name"] = ["["] + towny_mini["name"] + ["]"] + ["("] + towny_mini["website"] + [")"]

towny_mini["location"] = (
    ["[map](http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&hq=&ll="]
    + towny_mini["latitude"].astype(str)
    + [","]
    + towny_mini["longitude"].astype(str)
    + ["&z=13&spaced attr=True)"]
)

towny_mini["location"] = towny_mini["location"].str.replace(" ", "%20")

(
    GT(
        towny_mini[["url_name", "location", "land_area_km2", "density_2021"]],
        rowname_col="url_name",
    )
    .tab_header(
        title="The Municipalities of Ontario",
        subtitle="The top 10 highest population density in 2021",
    )
    .tab_stubhead(label="Municipality")
    .fmt_markdown(columns=["url_name", "location"])
    .fmt_number(columns=["land_area_km2", "density_2021"], decimals=1)
    .cols_label(
        land_area_km2=html("land area, <br>km<sup>2</sup>"),
        density_2021=html("density, <br>people/km<sup>2</sup>"),
    )
)

[juleswg23]

I'm not sure if this addresses your broader question, but in the particular example you linked, in addition to replacing spaces with %20 I had success wrapping the text with <>. So I altered the line to:

towny_mini["location"] = (
    ["[map](<http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&hq=&ll="] # Note the opening <
    + towny_mini["latitude"].astype(str)
    + [","]
    + towny_mini["longitude"].astype(str)
    
    # Adding example attribute that contains a space
    + ["&z=13&spaced attr=True>)"] # Note the closing >
)

[atseewal]

That's another option I didn't know about. Looks like <> is the markdown spec, so could be a useful alternative.

I view it as challenging for a newer or less experienced user. If the links are created based on a table, there may be rows that have a mix of spaces and no spaces. This is what I encountered originally. It wasn't immediately clear what caused it, as I could copy the text and paste it into the browser.

I think it should be something that can be done automatically, but maybe that fits better in gt-extras (which has a hyperlink specific function) rather than fmt_markdown()