Using Markdown with Rails

Question

I want users to type in Markdown text in a textarea and when they post it, I display the corresponding html. I read that Rails used to have a markdown method or similarly called method, that you could just call on that field in the ERB file:

<%= markdown(@post.content) %>

Apparently, Rails took that functionality out. What is the best way to get that functionality again? That seems to solve my need.

Answer 1

I would use Redcarpet to do the markdown-html conversion. Also, I would move the conversion from the view to some other object. You could use callbacks (before_save) or use Observers.

From the docs:

markdown = Redcarpet::Markdown.new(Redcarpet::Render::HTML,
    :autolink => true, :space_after_headers => true)

markdown.render("This is *bongos*, indeed.")
#=> "<p>This is <em>bongos</em>, indeed</p>"

You probably want to store the result in another column, say @post.content_parsed so that the user can make later edits to the post, plus this way you don't need to make the conversion on every request.