Shortcodes within the sidebar text/html widget: How to preserve the raw HTML output of the shortcode?

Question

WordPress 5.2 destroys structured data by adding rel="noopener noreferrer" to widget output (also to shortcodes): How to display the shortcode output without code change?

This feature was added in 5.2: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/43280

Basically there is nothing wrong with adding rel="noopener noreferrer" to <a href="..." target="_blank"></a> links, as it will protect from malicious comments or bad authors for instance.

Anyway I have a shortcode from some plugin which is generating structured data (rating stars) for a website and embedded via shortcode. Adding the rel-Attribute there breaks the structured data (as confirmed by https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/u/0/?hl=de).

How can I use the shortcode in a sidebar widget with the code preserved?

Answer 1

Try this code:

add_filter( 'wp_targeted_link_rel', '__return_false', 9999 );

function widget_text_replace($text) {
    $search = array('rel="noopener"');
    $replace = array('');
    $text = str_replace($search, $replace, $text);
    return $text;
}
add_filter('widget_text', 'widget_text_replace');