How does one NOT html_encode a variable in rails?

Question

With Rails, If I have a variable with HTML content, how do I output it, unencoded in my view file?

This code, for example:

<% my_variable = "<b>Some Bolded Text</b>" %>
<%= my_variable %>

Outputs:

<b>Some Bolded Text</b>

Answer 1

Are you using Rails 3 Beta? Rails 2 by default does not HTML escape your output, you usually have to use the h helper, see Nate's post. If you are using Rails 3 you need to either use the raw helper or set your string as html safe. Examples

<% my_variable = "<b>Some Bolded Text</b>" %>
<%= raw my_variable %>

Or

<% my_variable = "<b>Some Bolded Text</b>".html_safe %>
<%= my_variable %>   

Check your Rails version and get back to us.