HTML URL Variable Substitutions not working when user opens link in new window

What’s the issue?

We are trying to use variable substitution in links as documented here.

Here is an example of the HTML we are using: <a href="//example.com/?SRC=QUERY_PARAM(SRC,XXXX)" data-amp-replace="QUERY_PARAM">Go to my site</a>

This is working fine if you click on the link normally, but we have noticed that if we right-click on one of these links, or press down on a mobile device to open in a new window, the variable substitution does not work correctly. Instead of linking to //example.com?SRC=XXXX we get //example.com?SRC=QUERY_PARAM(SRC,E132).

How do we reproduce the issue?

Here is a link to the test case - http://jsbin.com/daduzekiho/edit?html,output

1. Click on the link normally to observe the variable substitution working correctly
2. Go back to the test case and right-click/press and hold on the link and open in a new tab/window. Observe that the variable has not been substituted.

What browsers are affected?

Seems to affect all browsers. We have observed this behaviour in Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Microsoft Edge.

Which AMP version is affected?

Version 1524089272632

[jpettitt]

Right click takes a different path in the browser, it doesn’t fire the click event handler so we never do the substitution. May be fixable by catching right click events, stashing the original url somewhere and updating the href url in place.

[staceyfenton]

That’s great @alabiaga, thanks for letting me know!