Preserving whitespace / indentation in Rails database column

Question

I have blocks of pseudo-code text stored in a database that get printed off line-by-line and displayed in HTML.

Pseudo-code entered in text column in database:

while (counter <= 10) {
  printf("Enter grade: ");
  scanf("%d", &grade);
  total = total + grade;
  counter = counter + 1;
} /* end while */

Controller:

def index
    @code = Code.first // just a filler for the time being
end

Index:

- @code.cont.each_line do |line|
    - i += 1
    .line
        %span= i
        %li.line= line
- i = 0

Somewhere along the way Ruby automatically strips out any whitespace and just leaves me with the text. I'd like to know how to preserve this so that

This:

while (counter <= 10) {
  printf("Enter grade: ");
  scanf("%d", &grade);
  total = total + grade;
  counter = counter + 1;
} /* end while */

Doesn't come out as this:

while (counter <= 
printf("Enter grade: ");
scanf("%d", &grade);
total = total + grade;
counter = counter + 1;
} /* end while */

Answer 1

I'm pretty sure your space characters are there, but you can't see them due to the way HTML handles whitespace. Double check this by putting your text into a variable and dumping it to console with a simple puts my_chunk_of_text. If the spaces are there (and I can't see why they wouldn't be, based on the code you posted), you have a couple of alternatives:

1) Sandwich your displayed text with the <pre> tag, which renders preformatted text. You're going to want to do this in your view, like this:

<pre><%= @my_chunk_of_text %></pre>

2) Save the text in HTML format, with non-breaking spaces ( ) wherever you want a space to appear, and <br> where you need a newline. This code can be rendered in your view with the html_safe helper.

<%= @my_chunk_of_text.html_safe %>