Multi line text

Rails
1

Hi,

I am storing multi-lined information in a text field in the database,
and intaking it using a text_area field. When i output it, the
information is all streamed into one line. How can I output the
information with the line breaks.

Thanks!

2

Replace ‘\n’ with ‘
’ (or ‘
\n’) in your string when rendering
it.

Cheers.

3

I define the following method in one of my helper files:

wraps each line to width characters, splitting lines on a

whitespace character
def wrap_text(text, width = nil)
char_count = 0
0.upto(text.length) do |i|
point = i;
# reset the character counter if we encounter a newline
# before we’ve reached width characters
char_count = 0 if text[point…point] == “\n”;
if char_count > width
# once we hit the desired width of characters, start
# moving backwards one character at a time until we
# encounter a whitespace character
point -=1 while text[point…point] != " "
text.insert(point+1, “\n”)
# we’ve inserted a newline, reset the character counter
char_count = 0;
else
char_count+=1
end
end
return text
end

I’m sure there’s an easier method for line wrapping (if anyone else
has a better method, I’d love to see it). I did come across the
following site earlier today, which includes a much simpler method
for line wrapping, although unfortunately it doesn’t work:

http://redhanded.hobix.com/inspect/methodCheckDateSucc.html

the method is the following:

str = “Hello. Ruby rocks. " * 50
while space_pos = str.rindex(” ", 80)
str[space_pos, 1] = “\n”
end

but it fails to correctly line wrap, since each call to str.rindex
doesn’t take into account where the previous newline character was
inserted… I just didn’t want to spend any time fixing it, since I’ve
already got a working line wrap method (albeit mine is a bit
cumbersome).

Mike

4

You might want to use the simple_format TextHelper:

simple_format(text)

Returns text transformed into HTML using very simple formatting rules
Surrounds paragraphs with

tags, and converts line breaks into

Two consecutive newlines(\n\n) are considered as a paragraph, one
newline (\n) is considered a linebreak, three or more consecutive
newlines are turned into two newlines

5

Mike G. wrote:

I’m sure there’s an easier method for line wrapping (if anyone else
has a better method, I’d love to see it). I did come across the
following site earlier today, which includes a much simpler method
for line wrapping, although unfortunately it doesn’t work:

Mike,

There’s an existing word_wrap TextHelper function that appears to do the
same thing as yours. It’s implementation is also a wee bit smaller:

def word_wrap(text, line_width = 80)
text.gsub(/\n/, “\n\n”).gsub(/(.{1,#{line_width}})(\s+|$)/,
“\1\n”).strip
end

6

Thanks Curtis, that’s good to know… Although I think I’ll stick to my
current method, as this one seems to remove lines with nothing but a
line feed on them, which I often have, since I’m displaying the
contents of user entered text in a 

 tag.  With my method, I

get pretty much exactly what the user has entered, including their

empty linefeeds, but wrapped so that it doesn’t extend past the width

of the page.

Mike

            


            

              
              
              
            


            

                
                
              


          

          

            

              

              


              
                  
                  
              7
              
            

            

              
Thanks for all the help! I ended up using the simple_format helper as a

base, but modified it so that it didn’t put 
 tags around the entire

thing.


def simple_format2(text)

text.gsub!(/(\r\n|\n|\r)/, “\n”) # lets make them newlines

crossplatform

text.gsub!(/\n\n+/, “\n\n”) # zap dupes

text.gsub!(/\n\n/, ‘
\0
’) # turn two newlines into paragraph

text.gsub!(/([^\n])(\n)([^\n])/, ‘\1\2
\3’) # turn single

newline into 


end


Thanks again!