displaying markdown in my textarea

Question

I'm using BlueCloth to create html from markdown from the content my users enter into a textarea like this:

def create
  @post = Post.new(params[:post]) do |post|
    body = BlueCloth.new(post.body) 
    post.body = body.to_html
  end

...

end

This works great! I get the html stored in the database fine, But how do I show markdown in the textarea when the user edits? I tried:

def edit
  @post = Post.find(params[:id])
  @post.body = BlueCloth.new(@post.body)
  @post.body.text
end

The output in my textarea looks like:

#<BlueCloth:0x10402d578>

Answer 1

Bluecloth's documentation isn't very well defined. I'm not sure there's an easy way to convert html => markdown.

However, there's nothing stopping you storing the markdown in your database, and convert it to html as necessary.

If you want html to be the default returned by @post.body, then you could always override the accessor.

class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
  ...
  def body
    BlueCloth.new(@body).to_html
  end

  def markdown
    @body
  end
end

Now @post.body returns the html version of the markdown. while @post.markdown returns the markdown source.