\n new line escape sequence in ERB

Question

I'm not sure why "\n\n" is not adding two line breaks in my code below:

<%= (getparagraph(@geography, "geography")+"\n\n") if @geography != "Other" %>

To clarify the method getparagraphs simply returns a paragraph of text. I'm trying to add two line breaks within the Ruby code without having to use  

Any ideas? Everything I've read implies that it should work.

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 11 '11 at 18:09

4

You're outputting HTML; whitespace is largely ignored upon rendering.

Use   tags instead, and .html_safe.

answered Nov 11 '11 at 18:09

Dave Newton

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mu is too short · Accepted Answer · 2011-11-11T23:48:10.323

Your helper has "paragraph" in its name so maybe you should wrap it in a paragraph and use CSS to add the appropriate spacing around the paragraph:

<% if @geography != "Other" %>
    <p>
      <%= getparagraph(@geography, "geography") %>
    </p>
<% end %>

You could always add a special class to the  if you need an extra spacing after this:

<% if @geography != "Other" %>
    <p class="geo-chunk">
      <%= getparagraph(@geography, "geography") %>
    </p>
<% end %>

and then in your CSS:

.geo-chunk {
    margin-bottom: 2em; /* Or whatever works */
}

And if this is to appear inside another  then you'd need to re-arrange the HTML a bit as you can't put a block element inside a :

<div>
    <!-- The old <p> content ... -->
    <% if @geography != "Other" %>
        <div class="geo-chunk">
          <%= getparagraph(@geography, "geography") %>
        </div>
    <% end %>
</div>

Many thanks! I went with option 1. Of course, I didn't think to place the
or
tag between the if and end statements. — Edward Castano, Nov 11 '11 at 21:31
@Edward: Cool, I had to tweak option 2 a bit BTW, I remember that you can't (legally) put any block elements inside a `
` but that doesn't have anything to do with option 1. — mu is too short, Nov 11 '11 at 23:59

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 11 '11 at 18:10

1

Is this within HTML? If so, then just use  . HTML ignores multiple whitespace characters, so you could have one space or 50 newlines and the result would be the same.

Another note: unless you're using XHTML (itself not a great idea), do not use self-closing tags such as  . The slash is invalid, so omit it.

answered Nov 11 '11 at 18:10

Marnen Laibow-Koser

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Actually, strictly speaking, the slash is valid, but semantically different from what you might expect. See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3201870/are-self-closing-input-tags-valid-in-html-4 . – Marnen Laibow-Koser Nov 11 '11 at 21:37

\n new line escape sequence in ERB

3 Answers3