In Rails - Is There a Rails Method to Convert Newlines to <Br>

In Rails - is there a rails method to convert newlines to br ?

Yes, rails has simple_format which does exactly what you are looking for, and slightly better since it also adds paragraph tags. See

http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionView/Helpers/TextHelper.html#method-i-simple_format

Example:

 simple_format(mystring)

Note that simple_format allows basic HTML tags, but also passes text through sanitize which removes all scripts, so it should be safe for user input.

How can I convert a newline to a BR tag?

str = str.gsub(/[\r\n]+/, "<br>")

This will turn any number of consecutive \r and/or \n characters into a single <br>.

Rails: Converting a text field's linebreaks into br /

try

<%= simple_format @template.about %>

http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionView/Helpers/TextHelper.html#method-i-simple_format

It works for me :-\

1.9.3p194 :017 > str = "Thanks for the fish, guys! Not like I wanted it, but... uh... thanks? 
1.9.3p194 :018"> \"I'll be the judge of that,\" he said! 
1.9.3p194 :019"> And now, more useless copy so I can isolate that weird bud that Amanda found. 
1.9.3p194 :020"> Wait! I meant 'weird bug..."
 #=> "Thanks for the fish, guys! Not like I wanted it, but... uh... thanks? \n\"I'll be the judge of that,\" he said! \nAnd now, more useless copy so I can isolate that weird bud that Amanda found. \nWait! I meant 'weird bug..."


1.9.3p194 :021 > simple_format str
 #=> "<p>Thanks for the fish, guys! Not like I wanted it, but... uh... thanks? \n<br />\"I'll be the judge of that,\" he said! \n<br />And now, more useless copy so I can isolate that weird bud that Amanda found. \n<br />Wait! I meant 'weird bug...</p>"

or using gsub

1.9.3p194 :022 > str.gsub("\n", "<br />") 
 #=> "Thanks for the fish, guys! Not like I wanted it, but... uh... thanks? <br />\"I'll be the judge of that,\" he said! <br />And now, more useless copy so I can isolate that weird bud that Amanda found. <br />Wait! I meant 'weird bug..." 

How to replace Space with Line Break in Ruby on Rails?

While printing it in html you will need to use raw, otherwise rails will escape the tags

= raw name.gsub(" ", "<br>")

HTML and Ruby on Rails - Display br/ tags as line breaks, but other tags as strings

You could do something like this:

<% @user_input.split("<br/>").each do |line| %>
  <%= line %><br/>
<% end %>

Output:

<a href='#2'>Go to #2</a>
<a href='#3'>Go to #3</a>

Or even better, use a regexp so you can split either <br> or <br/>:

<% @user_input.split(/<br\/>|<br>/).each do |line| %>
  <%= line %><br/>
<% end %>

UPDATE

Some cases will fail with the above approach, for example:

<input type="text" value="<br/>">

To be able to handle those cases, you could use Nokogiri, already bundled with rails, but you'll need add a couple of additional steps in your code.

First, your controller:

def some_action
  input = "<a href='#2'>Go to #2</a><br/><a href='#3'>Go to #3</a><br><input type='text' value='<br/>'>"

  @user_input = Nokogiri::HTML.parse(input)
  @user_input.search('br').each { |br| br.replace("\n") }
end

Basically, you will create a Nokogiri HTML document and replace all br tags with "\n".

Second, create a css class to use those "\n" as break lines:

.new-lines {
  white-space: pre-line
}

Now you will simply add this to your view:

<div class="new-lines">
  <%= @user_input.css('body').children %>
<div>

Notice the use of class="new-lines", this is important to make each "\n" act as a <br>.

And the output:

<a href="#2">Go to #2</a>
<a href="#3">Go to #3</a>
<input type="text" value="<br/>">

Yes, there is a small caveat since the original value='<br>' turned into value="<br/>", but i hope that not to be a big issue; but if it is, then you could do something like this:

<%= @input.css('body').children.to_s.gsub("<", "<").gsub(">", ">") %>

And the output:

<a href="#2">Go to #2</a>
<a href="#3">Go to #3</a>
<input type="text" value="<br/>">

You may need to enhance this code further for more edge cases, but i think this example will do the trick.

Also consider using a helper instead of throwing all the code in your controller/view.

Line break in string returned by a helper method

You should use <br> or create it like tag('br'):

your_string = "test string" + tag('br')
your_string.html_safe   #return your string

As @max rightly pointed, from a security vulnerability (XSS) aspect you can use h() on user-provided text, which converts your string to a safe string and allows you to securely call html_safe on the full string.

Preserve newline in text area with Ruby on Rails

Newlines are actually being preserved(as \r\n), you just don't see them in your index/show views.

In these views, call simple_format on your post.body field to replace \ns with <br>s(HTML newlines):

simple_format(post.body)

From docs:

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

Returns text transformed into HTML using simple formatting rules.
Two or more consecutive newlines(\n\n) are considered as a paragraph and wrapped 
in <p> tags. One newline (\n) is considered as a linebreak and a <br /> tag is 
appended. This method does not remove the newlines from the text.

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