Render Markdown FILES in Rails app

I love this new era of ultra-simplified websites.

PlanetScale uses MARKDOWN for its’ marketing pages.

Focus on delivering the value, not the flashy animations! 🎯

And you can be MUCH more productive with Markdown than with HTML!

Here’s how you can render markdown files in your Rails app:

Add gem redcarpet

# console
bundle add redcarpet

Create a helper to parse markdown to HTML:

# app/helpers/application_helper.rb
  def markdown_to_html(markdown_text)
    renderer = Redcarpet::Render::HTML.new
    markdown = Redcarpet::Markdown.new(renderer, extensions = {})
    markdown.render(markdown_text).html_safe
  end

Finally, render the markdown file in a Rails view!

For TailwindCSS, wrap it in class="prose".

<!-- render README.md in any view -->
  <div class="prose">
    <%= markdown_to_html(File.read(Rails.root.join('README.md'))) %>
  </div>

Learn more about Markdown with Redcarpet and Code syntax highlighting with gem Rouge