mediaEmbed.previewsInData ignored server-side when Config Options come from a JSON file #636

Description

Hey folks 👋 We hit this on a site that moved from Redactor to CKEditor, and it took a while to track down, so here's what we found.

Since 5.3.0, a field's Config Options can come from a JSON file in config/ckeditor/ (Advanced → Config Options → File). That works great in the editor itself. But _normalizeFigures() reads mediaEmbed.previewsInData from $this->options, and that only gets filled from the file inside configJs():

private function configJs(): string
{
    if (isset($this->jsFile) && strtolower(pathinfo($this->jsFile, PATHINFO_EXTENSION)) === 'json') {
        $this->options = self::jsonFileContents($this->jsFile);
    }
    // ...

configJs() only runs when the field's input is rendered. So when an element is saved without the editor (craft resave/*, resave queue jobs, revision reverts, imports, programmatic saves), previewsInData comes back as false. Redactor-style <figure><iframe> then gets rewritten into a bare <oembed>, even though the JSON file sets previewsInData: true.

Why it matters

In #605, the advice for Redactor-era videos was to set mediaEmbed.previewsInData: true, because Parse Embeds can't handle the youtube.com/embed/<id> URLs that Redactor stored. That's what we did. Then the 5.3.0 migration moved our config into config/ckeditor/Standard.json for us, and the setting stopped applying to anything saved outside the editor.

The result is videos that look fine in the CP but render as an empty <oembed> on the front end. Restoring an old revision brings it back too, because the revision still has the Redactor markup and gets re-normalised on save. On our (statically built) site it went unnoticed for months.

Steps to reproduce

1. Create config/ckeditor/Test.json:

   { "mediaEmbed": { "previewsInData": true } }

2. Create a CKEditor field with Media Embed in the toolbar. Under Advanced → Config Options, choose File → Test.json. Add the field to an entry type.
3. Set Redactor-style markup on an entry without the editor:

   php craft resave/entries --element-id=<id> --set=<fieldHandle> --to='=<figure><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dQw4w9WgXcQ"></iframe></figure>'

4. Check the stored value.

Actual:

<figure class="media"><oembed url="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dQw4w9WgXcQ"></oembed></figure>

Expected:

<figure class="media"><div data-oembed-url="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dQw4w9WgXcQ"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dQw4w9WgXcQ"></iframe></div></figure>

If you switch the field to JSON with the exact same options and run step 3 again, you get the expected output. So it's only the file-based config that's affected.

Suggested fix

Resolve the options in one place, so they're available whether or not the input has been rendered:

private function resolvedOptions(): ?array
{
    if (isset($this->jsFile) && strtolower(pathinfo($this->jsFile, PATHINFO_EXTENSION)) === 'json') {
        return self::jsonFileContents($this->jsFile);
    }

    return $this->options;
}

Then in _normalizeFigures():

$previewsInData = $this->resolvedOptions()['mediaEmbed']['previewsInData'] ?? false;

Thanks! 🙏

Additional info

• Craft version: 5.10.14
• PHP version: 8.4
• Database driver & version: MySQL 8.0
• Plugins & versions: CKEditor 5.7.0 (the code is unchanged in 5.9.0), HTML Field 3.6.0