andersundsehr / shy-converter

1.0.2 2026-09-14 09:38 UTC

Requires

• typo3/cms-backend: ^13.4 || ^14.0
• typo3/cms-core: ^13.4 || ^14.0

Suggests

• andersundsehr/aus_project: *

GPL-2.0-or-later

Published on Packagist.org on 2026-09-15 14:50 UTC

README

This extension converts HTML soft hyphens (­ and the malformed &shy) and non-breaking spaces ( ) to their UTF-8 equivalents. It includes a database migration to update existing data.

Installation

Install the extension in a TYPO3 13.4 or 14 project:

composer require andersundsehr/shy-converter

Optionally migrate existing values after reviewing the affected records:

vendor/bin/typo3 shy-converter:migrate --dry-run
vendor/bin/typo3 shy-converter:migrate

Visible special characters in backend input fields

Plain TCA input fields without an explicit renderType automatically use the visibleShy render type. Stored UTF-8 soft hyphens (U+00AD) and non-breaking spaces (U+00A0) are displayed as the visible strings ­ and  , so editors can find, add, or remove them.

The render type uses TYPO3's hidden input for the persisted value. Its backend JavaScript converts ­ and the malformed variant &shy to U+00AD, and   to U+00A0, while editors type and immediately before the form is submitted. Literal entity-like text is displayed with an & prefix and stored unchanged, matching TYPO3's Visual Editor behavior. The original hidden value remains untouched until the JavaScript is initialized, preventing an unconverted visible value from being submitted if initialization fails.

The conversion is intentionally scoped to forms rendered with visibleShy. Direct or programmatic DataHandler calls are not modified. Input fields with another explicit render type and fields inside FlexForms are not changed automatically.

The render type can also be assigned explicitly:

'config' => [
    'type' => 'input',
    'renderType' => 'visibleShy',
],