Question

Here’s the input HTML:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur.

<ul>
  <li>Item 1</li>
  <li>Item 2</li>
  <li>Item 3</li>
</ul>

Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

If I pass that through Rails’ simple_format the output is:

<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur.</p>

<p><ul>
<br />  <li>Item 1</li>
<br />  <li>Item 2</li>
<br />  <li>Item 3</li>
</ul></p>

<p>Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.</p>

Notice the <br />‘s before each list item.

How can I get simple_format to not do that?

Ultimately what I want to do is add paragraph tags around content that isn’t already wrapped in some sort of tag (ie. blockquote, ul, ol).

Answer 1

As far as i’m aware, simple_format is designed to just work around line breaks ‘\n’ (which are created when you press the enter key)

simple_format creates a <br /> for \n and <p> for \n\n

simple_format is not really designed to work with existing html input but more for text_area fields from databases and text strings etc.

see rails docs for examples: ActionView – simple_format

A couple of suggestions could be just wrap your entire input using content_tag:

    <%= content_tag :p, :class => "strong" do -%>
      Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur.

      <ul>
       <li>Item 1</li>
       <li>Item 2</li>
       <li>Item 3</li>
     </ul>

     Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
    <% end -%>

or maybe if possible format your html without linebreaks:

  Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur.

  <ul> <li>Item 1 </li> <li>Item 2</li> <li>Item 3</li> </ul>

  Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

These are both pretty hackish, the best solution would be to have all the input stored as html before it gets called to be displayed. But not knowing how your obtaining the input, it is hard to suggest a way to do that.