How to store lightweight formatting (Textile, Markdown) in database?

Question

I\'m going to be implementing a lightweight formatting language (probably Textile, maybe Markdown) in a project I\'m working on, and I\'m wonder how best to store it in the data

Answer 1

You should definetly store original Textile/Markdown markup and use either standard HTTP caching stuff (Last-modified, Expires-At, ETag) to cache rendered pages or just cache the result of processing markup.

Answer 2

Store markdown:

• Every view = conversion
• Every edit = no processing

Store html

• Every view = no processing
• Every edit = convert to markdown and back

Store both

• Every view = no processing
• Every edit = convert to html after edit

You have to weigh up your processing costs vs. your storage cost.

Answer 3

I'm currently using Markdown with PHP. I store the markdown-source in the database, and I display the Converted Version upon request. I have no performance issues, and am very happy with this setup.

Answer 4

What I've seen is indeed to store the compiled HTML in a seperate row in the database. Just have one row 'content' and another 'content_html', and save the compiled HTML in the 'content_html' row.

(Surely you have some kind of save method that you can override to do this?)