Rails Helper - How to Get a Helper to Give Me a '<Br/>' (Or Other Markup)

rails helper - how can I get a helper to give me a `br/` (or other markup)

Use tag(:br) instead of "<br/>".

content_tag(:br) creates opening and closing br tags and using raw or html_safe is just ugly (not to mention dangerous).

Rails - label form helper insert html tags inside content

The string needs to be marked as HTML safe so that Rails will not sanitize the output. Here is the concise way to write the label.

<%= f.label :foo, 'Foo <br /> Bar: '.html_safe %>

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.

Rails -- Add a line break into a text area

The problem isn't so much editing the value as it is rendering it later. To add newline characters to your value while editing it in a textarea, just hit the return key. When you re-edit that value later, the whitespace should still be there.

Rendering the whitespace is the tricky part. In HTML, whitespace is generally insignificant. A renderer like the one your browser uses will display a single space for any continuous string of whitespace. So merely dumping the value onto the page won't be enough:

<%= obj.description %>

Even though your value may be "One \t \n \n Two", it will show up on the screen as "One Two".

To get those new line characters to actually separate the lines when displayed, you'll need to convert them to HTML before rendering:

<%= obj.description.gsub(/\n/, '<br/>') %>

Of course, if users are entering data that will be included in your HTML, you should be escaping the values to protect against XSS. If new lines are the only thing you need to support, it should be as simple as this:

<%= h(obj.description).gsub(/\n/, '<br/>') %>

If you want to allow more complex formatting, look into Markdown and Textile (both of which Rails provides helper view methods for). Just be sure to investigate what if any support they provide for XSS prevention.

rails activerecord concern, including url helpers

In your htmlizeBody function:
include Rails.application.routes.url_helpers include ActionView::Helpers

This is in the wrong scope, moving it underneath extend ActiveSupport::Concern will resolve your error.

Another question you could ask yourself is why you need to use view helpers at the concern level?

include Rails.application.routes.url_helpers is usually used when modifying the default url host options (typically when you need to interface with an external API). In this case, it would make sense to use it in the /lib directory.

See this SO post and this post on using url helpers for more info

Adding a new line/break tag in XML

The solution to this question is:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="dummy.xsl"?>
  <item>
     <summary>
        <![CDATA[Tootsie roll tiramisu macaroon wafer carrot cake. <br />      
                 Danish topping sugar plum tart bonbon caramels cake.]]>
     </summary>
  </item>

by adding the <br /> inside the the <![CDATA]]> this allows the line to break, thus creating a new line!