# Method for formatting HTML nicely?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/method-for-formatting-html-nicely/145197>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [August 6, 2008, 7:40pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/method-for-formatting-html-nicely/145197 "2008-08-06T19:40:46Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![davidtl](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/35a633/32.png) [@davidtl](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/davidtl)\
**Post date:** [August 6, 2008, 7:40pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/method-for-formatting-html-nicely/145197/1 "2008-08-06T19:40:46Z")

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Anyone who knows a piece of Ruby code that takes a string of HTML as  
input and then outputs it nicely formatted like the following?

Before:

Ugly code ...

After:

 Ugly code ... 

Any suggestions is welcome! Thanks.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![davidtl](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/35a633/32.png) [@davidtl](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/davidtl)\
**Post date:** [August 6, 2008, 8:52pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/method-for-formatting-html-nicely/145197/2 "2008-08-06T20:52:19Z")

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> Anyone who knows a piece of Ruby code that takes a string of HTML as  
> input and then outputs it nicely formatted like the following?

You want the tidy library.

[http://tidy.rubyforge.org/](http://tidy.rubyforge.org/)  
[http://www.cosinux.org/~dam/projects/rails-tidy/doc/](http://www.cosinux.org/~dam/projects/rails-tidy/doc/)