Rails 3: How to display properly text from “textarea”?

Question

In my Rails 3 application I use textarea to let users to write a new message in a forum.

However, when the message is displayed, all newlines look like spac

Answer 1

The following helper preserves new lines as line breaks, and renders any HTML or Script (e.g Javscript) as plain text.

def with_new_lines(string)
   (h(string).gsub(/\n/, '<br/>')).html_safe
end

Use as so in views

<%= with_new_lines @object.some_text %>

Answer 2

Rails got a helper method out of the box, so you dont have to write your own method.

From the documentation:

simple_format(text, html_options={}, options={})

my_text = "Here is some basic text...\n...with a line break."

simple_format(my_text)
# => "<p>Here is some basic text...\n<br />...with a line break.</p>"

more_text = "We want to put a paragraph...\n\n...right there."

simple_format(more_text)
# => "<p>We want to put a paragraph...</p>\n\n<p>...right there.</p>"

simple_format("Look ma! A class!", :class => 'description')
# => "<p class='description'>Look ma! A class!</p>"

Answer 3

I just used white-space: pre-line. So next line (\n) will render it.

Answer 4

You can use style="white-space: pre-wrap;" in the html tag surrounding the text. This respects any line breaks in the text.

Answer 5

You'll need to convert the plain text of the textarea to HTML.

At the most basic level you could run a string replacement:

 message_content.gsub! /\n/, '<br />'

You could also use a special format like Markdown (Ruby library: BlueCloth) or Textile (Ruby library: RedCloth).

Answer 6

I was using Ace code-editor in my rails app and i had problem, that whenever i update or create the code, it adds always extra TAB on every line (except first). I couldn't solve it with gsub or javascript replace.. But it accidently solved itself when i disabled layout for that template.

So, i solved it with

render :layout => false