Rails 3: How to display properly text from "textarea"? - ruby-on-rails

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 spaces (there is no <br />). Maybe there are other mismatch examples, I don't know yet.
I wonder what is the most appropriate way to deal with this.
I guess that the text that is stored in the database is OK (I see for example that < is converted to <), so the main problem is the presentation.
Are there build-in helper methods in Rails for this ?
(simple_format does something that looks similar to what I need, but it adds <p> tags which I don't want to appear.)

Answer 1

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 2

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

Answer 3

Since simple_format does not do what you want, I'd make a simple helper method to convert newlines to <br>s:
def nl2br(s)
s.gsub(/\n/, '<br>')
end
Then in your view you can use it like this:
<%= nl2br(h(#forum_post.message)) %>

Answer 4

If someone still gets redirected here and uses Rails 4:
http://apidock.com/rails/v4.0.2/ActionView/Helpers/TextHelper/simple_format
You can now specify the tag it gets wrapped in (defaults to p) like so:
simple_format(my_text, {}, wrapper_tag: "div")
# => "<div>Here is some basic text...\n<br />...with a line break.</div>"

Answer 5

CSS-only option
I believe one of the easiest options is to use css white-space: pre-line;
Other answers also mentioned using white-space, but I think it needs a little more information:
In most cases you should probably choose pre-line over pre-wrap. View the difference here.
It's very important to keep in mind about white-space that you should not do something like this:
<p style="white-space: pre-line;">
<%= your.text %>
</p>
It will produce extra spaces and line-breaks in the output. Instead, go with this:
<p style="white-space: pre-line;"><%= your.text %></p>
HTML alternative
Another way is to wrap your text in <pre> tags. And last note on my CSS option is true here as well:
<p>
<pre><%= your.text %></pre>
</p>
Don't separate your text from <pre> tags with spaces or line-breaks.
Final thoughts
After googling this matter a little I have a feeling that html-approach is considered less clean than the css one and we should go css-way. However, html-way seems to be more browser-compatible (supports archaic browsers, but who cares):
pre tag
white-space

Answer 6

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 7

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

Answer 8

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 9

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