# How to make rails parse \<p\>, \<b\>, \<strong\> entered in text area?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-to-make-rails-parse-p-b-strong-entered-in-text-area/176544>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [October 1, 2009, 9:20pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-to-make-rails-parse-p-b-strong-entered-in-text-area/176544 "2009-10-01T21:20:57Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![nik](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/6de8d8/32.png) [@nik](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/nik)\
**Post date:** [October 1, 2009, 9:20pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-to-make-rails-parse-p-b-strong-entered-in-text-area/176544/1 "2009-10-01T21:20:57Z")

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Hello, I have this simple blog Post, I just want to jazz it up a bit  
with paragraphs, and bold faces, thought that wasn’t too much to ask  
for. But when I enter the following in the text area

```
<strong>You won't believe this!!</strong>

```

and save submit it, and then display it in the show action, wherein I  
use

\<%= @article.body %\>

it displays exactly the same

```
<strong>You won't believe this!!</strong>

```

I know about the “h” method and take care not to include it. – I  
haven’t done anything else with the app, I just generated the app and  
rake db:migrate’d it and nothing else. So it is a clean start. now,  
can anyone hint me what I might need to do in addition to not include  
the “h” as in \<%=h … %\> so to display html **and etc?**

Thanks!!~~

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![nik](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/6de8d8/32.png) [@nik](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/nik)\
**Post date:** [October 1, 2009, 9:32pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-to-make-rails-parse-p-b-strong-entered-in-text-area/176544/2 "2009-10-01T21:32:40Z")

</div>

What version of Rails are you using? I seem to remember discussion of  
auto-escaping by default in v3, but to my knowledge and testing this  
is not the case as of 2.3.4.

Check to make sure that your data is not html-escaped in the database.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![nik](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/6de8d8/32.png) [@nik](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/nik)\
**Post date:** [October 1, 2009, 10:51pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-to-make-rails-parse-p-b-strong-entered-in-text-area/176544/3 "2009-10-01T22:51:43Z")

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Hi Jemminger, I am using 2.3.2

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![nik](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/6de8d8/32.png) [@nik](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/nik)\
**Post date:** [October 1, 2009, 10:52pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-to-make-rails-parse-p-b-strong-entered-in-text-area/176544/4 "2009-10-01T22:52:18Z")

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oh yes and the database is mysql that comes with instantrails 2.0