Forum: Ruby on Rails Help displaying text

Apologies in advance ...this may be a really dumb question but here
goes.

@formatted_question[:a] contains text with HTML markup.  I want to
display it in a field so I can control its vertical and horizontal size
on the page. When it is displayed on the page now, rather than
interpreting the HTML, it is output into the text field as a string with
all HTML tags showing.  What am I doing wrong??

<div id = "A">
    <%= text_area_tag id="cka",(@formatted_question[:anno_a]) %>
</div>


Any help would be greatly appreciated

On Sun, Jan 27, 2013 at 11:31 AM, Dave Castellano <lists@ruby-forum.com> 
wrote:

> @formatted_question[:a] contains text with HTML markup.  I want to
> display it in a field so I can control its vertical and horizontal size
> on the page. When it is displayed on the page now, rather than
> interpreting the HTML, it is output into the text field as a string with
> all HTML tags showing.  What am I doing wrong??

Misusing a form element :-)

> <div id = "A">
>     <%= text_area_tag id="cka",(@formatted_question[:anno_a]) %>
> </div>

That's the way a text area works; if you want to control display size,
use CSS to size the appropriate block-level container (e.g. div, p).

--
Hassan Schroeder ------------------------ hassan.schroeder@gmail.com
http://about.me/hassanschroeder
twitter: @hassan

On Jan 27, 2013, at 3:04 PM, Hassan Schroeder wrote:

>> <div id = "A">
>>    <%= text_area_tag id="cka",(@formatted_question[:anno_a]) %>
>> </div>
>
> That's the way a text area works; if you want to control display size,
> use CSS to size the appropriate block-level container (e.g. div, p).
>
> --
> Hassan Schroeder ------------------------ hassan.schroeder@gmail.com
> http://about.me/hassanschroeder
> twitter: @hassan

Also, you need to indicate that the contents should not be escaped, but 
delivered as-is to the page:

<div id="cka">
  <%=raw @formatted_question[:anno_a] %>
</div>

Note the ERB tag begins "<%=raw" That 'raw' is 
http://apidock.com/rails/ActionView/Helpers/Output... and 
will send the actual contents, i.e., the HTML, to the page.

-Rob