Module ActionView::Helpers::TextHelper
In: vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_view/helpers/text_helper.rb

Provides a set of methods for working with text strings that can help unburden the level of inline Ruby code in the templates. In the example below we iterate over a collection of posts provided to the template and print each title after making sure it doesn‘t run longer than 20 characters:

  <% for post in @posts %>
    Title: <%= truncate(post.title, 20) %>
  <% end %>

Methods

Constants

VERBOTEN_TAGS = %w(form script) unless defined?(VERBOTEN_TAGS)
VERBOTEN_ATTRS = /^on/i unless defined?(VERBOTEN_ATTRS)
AUTO_LINK_RE = / ( # leading text <\w+.*?>| # leading HTML tag, or [^=!:'"\/]| # leading punctuation, or ^ # beginning of line ) ( (?:http[s]?:\/\/)| # protocol spec, or (?:www\.) # www.* ) ( ([\w]+:?[=?&\/.-]?)* # url segment \w+[\/]? # url tail (?:\#\w*)? # trailing anchor ) ([[:punct:]]|\s|<|$) # trailing text /x unless const_defined?(:AUTO_LINK_RE)

Public Instance methods

Turns all urls and email addresses into clickable links. The link parameter can limit what should be linked. Options are :all (default), :email_addresses, and :urls.

Example:

  auto_link("Go to http://www.rubyonrails.com and say hello to david@loudthinking.com") =>
    Go to <a href="http://www.rubyonrails.com">http://www.rubyonrails.com</a> and
    say hello to <a href="mailto:david@loudthinking.com">david@loudthinking.com</a>

If a block is given, each url and email address is yielded and the result is used as the link text. Example:

  auto_link(post.body, :all, :target => '_blank') do |text|
    truncate(text, 15)
  end

[Source]

     # File vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_view/helpers/text_helper.rb, line 144
144:       def auto_link(text, link = :all, href_options = {}, &block)
145:         return '' if text.blank?
146:         case link
147:           when :all             then auto_link_urls(auto_link_email_addresses(text, &block), href_options, &block)
148:           when :email_addresses then auto_link_email_addresses(text, &block)
149:           when :urls            then auto_link_urls(text, href_options, &block)
150:         end
151:       end

The regular puts and print are outlawed in eRuby. It‘s recommended to use the <%= "hello" %> form instead of print "hello". If you absolutely must use a method-based output, you can use concat. It‘s used like this: <% concat "hello", binding %>. Notice that it doesn‘t have an equal sign in front. Using <%= concat "hello" %> would result in a double hello.

[Source]

    # File vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_view/helpers/text_helper.rb, line 15
15:       def concat(string, binding)
16:         eval("_erbout", binding).concat(string)
17:       end

Returns a Cycle object whose to_s value cycles through items of an array every time it is called. This can be used to alternate classes for table rows:

  <%- for item in @items do -%>
    <tr class="<%= cycle("even", "odd") %>">
      ... use item ...
    </tr>
  <%- end -%>

You can use named cycles to prevent clashes in nested loops. You‘ll have to reset the inner cycle, manually:

  <%- for item in @items do -%>
    <tr class="<%= cycle("even", "odd", :name => "row_class")
      <td>
        <%- for value in item.values do -%>
          <span style="color:'<%= cycle("red", "green", "blue"
                                        :name => "colors") %>'">
            item
          </span>
        <%- end -%>
        <%- reset_cycle("colors") -%>
      </td>
   </tr>
 <%- end -%>

[Source]

     # File vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_view/helpers/text_helper.rb, line 260
260:       def cycle(first_value, *values)
261:         if (values.last.instance_of? Hash)
262:           params = values.pop
263:           name = params[:name]
264:         else
265:           name = "default"
266:         end
267:         values.unshift(first_value)
268: 
269:         cycle = get_cycle(name)
270:         if (cycle.nil? || cycle.values != values)
271:           cycle = set_cycle(name, Cycle.new(*values))
272:         end
273:         return cycle.to_s
274:       end

Extracts an excerpt from the text surrounding the phrase with a number of characters on each side determined by radius. If the phrase isn‘t found, nil is returned. Ex:

  excerpt("hello my world", "my", 3) => "...lo my wo..."

[Source]

    # File vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_view/helpers/text_helper.rb, line 44
44:       def excerpt(text, phrase, radius = 100, excerpt_string = "...")
45:         if text.nil? || phrase.nil? then return end
46:         phrase = Regexp.escape(phrase)
47: 
48:         if found_pos = text =~ /(#{phrase})/i
49:           start_pos = [ found_pos - radius, 0 ].max
50:           end_pos   = [ found_pos + phrase.length + radius, text.length ].min
51: 
52:           prefix  = start_pos > 0 ? excerpt_string : ""
53:           postfix = end_pos < text.length ? excerpt_string : ""
54: 
55:           prefix + text[start_pos..end_pos].strip + postfix
56:         else
57:           nil
58:         end
59:       end

Highlights the phrase where it is found in the text by surrounding it like <strong class="highlight">I‘m a highlight phrase</strong>. The highlighter can be specialized by passing highlighter as single-quoted string with \1 where the phrase is supposed to be inserted. N.B.: The phrase is sanitized to include only letters, digits, and spaces before use.

[Source]

    # File vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_view/helpers/text_helper.rb, line 36
36:       def highlight(text, phrase, highlighter = '<strong class="highlight">\1</strong>')
37:         if phrase.blank? then return text end
38:         text.gsub(/(#{Regexp.escape(phrase)})/i, highlighter) unless text.nil?
39:       end

Returns the text with all the Markdown codes turned into HTML-tags. This method is only available if BlueCloth can be required.

[Source]

     # File vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_view/helpers/text_helper.rb, line 111
111:         def markdown(text)
112:           text.blank? ? "" : BlueCloth.new(text).to_html
113:         end

Attempts to pluralize the singular word unless count is 1. See source for pluralization rules.

[Source]

    # File vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_view/helpers/text_helper.rb, line 62
62:       def pluralize(count, singular, plural = nil)
63:          "#{count} " + if count == 1
64:           singular
65:         elsif plural
66:           plural
67:         elsif Object.const_defined?("Inflector")
68:           Inflector.pluralize(singular)
69:         else
70:           singular + "s"
71:         end
72:       end

Resets a cycle so that it starts from the first element in the array the next time it is used.

[Source]

     # File vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_view/helpers/text_helper.rb, line 278
278:       def reset_cycle(name = "default")
279:         cycle = get_cycle(name)
280:         return if cycle.nil?
281:         cycle.reset
282:       end

Sanitizes the given HTML by making form and script tags into regular text, and removing all "onxxx" attributes (so that arbitrary Javascript cannot be executed). Also removes href attributes that start with "javascript:".

Returns the sanitized text.

[Source]

     # File vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_view/helpers/text_helper.rb, line 180
180:       def sanitize(html)
181:         # only do this if absolutely necessary
182:         if html.index("<")
183:           tokenizer = HTML::Tokenizer.new(html)
184:           new_text = ""
185: 
186:           while token = tokenizer.next
187:             node = HTML::Node.parse(nil, 0, 0, token, false)
188:             new_text << case node
189:               when HTML::Tag
190:                 if VERBOTEN_TAGS.include?(node.name)
191:                   node.to_s.gsub(/</, "&lt;")
192:                 else
193:                   if node.closing != :close
194:                     node.attributes.delete_if { |attr,v| attr =~ VERBOTEN_ATTRS }
195:                     if node.attributes["href"] =~ /^javascript:/i
196:                       node.attributes.delete "href"
197:                     end
198:                   end
199:                   node.to_s
200:                 end
201:               else
202:                 node.to_s.gsub(/</, "&lt;")
203:             end
204:           end
205: 
206:           html = new_text
207:         end
208: 
209:         html
210:       end

Returns text transformed into HTML using very simple formatting rules Surrounds paragraphs with <p> tags, and converts line breaks into <br/> 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

[Source]

     # File vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_view/helpers/text_helper.rb, line 122
122:       def simple_format(text)
123:         text.gsub!(/(\r\n|\n|\r)/, "\n") # lets make them newlines crossplatform
124:         text.gsub!(/\n\n+/, "\n\n") # zap dupes
125:         text.gsub!(/\n\n/, '</p>\0<p>') # turn two newlines into paragraph
126:         text.gsub!(/([^\n])(\n)([^\n])/, '\1\2<br />\3') # turn single newline into <br />
127:         
128:         content_tag("p", text)
129:       end

Turns all links into words, like "<a href="something">else</a>" to "else".

[Source]

     # File vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_view/helpers/text_helper.rb, line 154
154:       def strip_links(text)
155:         text.gsub(/<a.*>(.*)<\/a>/m, '\1')
156:       end

Strips all HTML tags from the input, including comments. This uses the html-scanner tokenizer and so it‘s HTML parsing ability is limited by that of html-scanner.

Returns the tag free text.

[Source]

     # File vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_view/helpers/text_helper.rb, line 216
216:       def strip_tags(html)
217:         if html.index("<")
218:           text = ""
219:           tokenizer = HTML::Tokenizer.new(html)
220: 
221:           while token = tokenizer.next
222:             node = HTML::Node.parse(nil, 0, 0, token, false)
223:             # result is only the content of any Text nodes
224:             text << node.to_s if node.class == HTML::Text  
225:           end
226:           # strip any comments, and if they have a newline at the end (ie. line with
227:           # only a comment) strip that too
228:           text.gsub(/<!--(.*?)-->[\n]?/m, "") 
229:         else
230:           html # already plain text
231:         end 
232:       end

Returns the text with all the Textile codes turned into HTML-tags. This method is only available if RedCloth can be required.

[Source]

    # File vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_view/helpers/text_helper.rb, line 84
84:         def textilize(text)
85:           if text.blank?
86:             ""
87:           else
88:             textilized = RedCloth.new(text, [ :hard_breaks ])
89:             textilized.hard_breaks = true if textilized.respond_to?("hard_breaks=")
90:             textilized.to_html
91:           end
92:         end

Returns the text with all the Textile codes turned into HTML-tags, but without the regular bounding <p> tag. This method is only available if RedCloth can be required.

[Source]

     # File vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_view/helpers/text_helper.rb, line 96
 96:         def textilize_without_paragraph(text)
 97:           textiled = textilize(text)
 98:           if textiled[0..2] == "<p>" then textiled = textiled[3..-1] end
 99:           if textiled[-4..-1] == "</p>" then textiled = textiled[0..-5] end
100:           return textiled
101:         end

Truncates text to the length of length and replaces the last three characters with the truncate_string if the text is longer than length.

[Source]

    # File vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_view/helpers/text_helper.rb, line 21
21:       def truncate(text, length = 30, truncate_string = "...")
22:         if text.nil? then return end
23:         l = length - truncate_string.length
24:         if $KCODE == "NONE"
25:           text.length > length ? text[0...l] + truncate_string : text
26:         else
27:           chars = text.split(//)
28:           chars.length > length ? chars[0...l].join + truncate_string : text
29:         end
30:       end

Word wrap long lines to line_width.

[Source]

    # File vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_view/helpers/text_helper.rb, line 75
75:       def word_wrap(text, line_width = 80)
76:         text.gsub(/\n/, "\n\n").gsub(/(.{1,#{line_width}})(\s+|$)/, "\\1\n").strip
77:       end

[Validate]