Introduction to Turbo Frames in Rails

Ruby on Rails integrates with Hotwire’s Turbo Frames to deliver highly interactive, JavaScript-driven web applications. This guide will illustrate how Turbo Frames can interact with Markdown rendering to provide dynamic and responsive content.

Rails Setup with Turbo Frames

Before we proceed, ensure that you have Turbo Frames installed and configured in your Ruby on Rails application. If not, you may refer to Hotwire’s official Rails installation guide documentation for complete configuration instructions.

Rendering Markdown in Rails

Rendering Markdown in Rails typically involves converting Markdown text into HTML. Redcarpet, a popular Ruby gem, provides a fast and easy-to-use interface for accomplishing this task. To render Markdown in Rails using Redcarpet, first add the gem to your Gemfile and run bundle.

gem 'redcarpet'

To convert Markdown into HTML, use the Redcarpet::Render::HTML class. In your controller:

markdown_renderer = Redcarpet::Render::HTML.new
markdown = Redcarpet::Markdown.new(markdown_renderer)

@rendered_text = markdown.render(your_markdown_text_here)

For more detailed information, look into our guide.

Using Turbo Frames with Markdown

After successfully setting up and understanding Turbo Frames and Markdown Rendering, let’s look at how we can use them together in a Rails application. Here is an example of how you can do it:

Create a turbo_frame_tag in your view.

<%= turbo_frame_tag 'markdown_frame' do %>
  <%= @rendered_text.html_safe %>
<% end %>

In your controller action, render the update using:

def update
  # your markdown text here could come from params, database or anywhere else
  markdown_text = "# This is a header"
  
  markdown = Redcarpet::Markdown.new(Redcarpet::Render::HTML.new)
  @rendered_text = markdown.render(markdown_text)
  
  respond_to do |format|
    format.turbo_stream
  end
end

Finally, create a update.turbo_stream.erb in your views to inject the rendered markdown into the turbo frame.

<%= turbo_frame_tag 'markdown_frame' do %>
  <%= @rendered_text.html_safe %>
<% end %>

Upon invoking the update action, Rails will now dynamically refresh your markdown frame with the updated HTML text, and your page will not reload.

Wrapping Up

So, that’s it! You’ve now integrated Turbo Frames with Markdown Rendering in Rails. If you would like to continue learning how to render Markdown with different setups, check out our articles about Markdown rendering in React or Angular rendering.

Make sure to utilize the numerous features that Markdown provides to enhance the look and feel of your content. Usage of blockquotes, nested lists, hyperlinks, and different text decorations are outstanding examples of increasing the readability of your content. Find more on those topics on our Markdown Blog. Utilize these techniques to create attention-grabbing, informative, and interactive blog posts or any other HTML content.

Remember that while this guide demonstrated basic usage of rendering markdown text and displaying it dynamically using Hotwire’s Turbo Frames, the full potential and use cases can be much broader depending on your application’s requirements.