Textilize Alternative

The textilize methods in Rails has never really been what I wanted. When it wasn’t adding paragraphs it was messing with my line brakes but it made such a good job of making HTML and XHTML that validates. In order to make it work better I re-wrote the method to be more suitable.

Put the following in the ‘application_helper.rhtml’ file and call it using ‘custom_text("String")’.

def custom_text(text)
    if text.blank?
        ""
    else
        text = RedCloth.new(text).to_html
        if text[0..2] == "<p>" then text = text[3..-1] end
        if text[-4..-1] == "</p>" then text = text[0..-5] end
        text = text.gsub("<p>", "")
        text = text.gsub("</p>", "")
        return text
    end
end

Job done, you should get correct HTML and XHTML but no paragraphs and no messing with line brakes.