Create a drag-and-drop markdown editor in Rails 6 (using Active Storage, SimpleMDE and Inline Attachment)

Overview

It is a memo when creating a Markdown editor that can drag and drop images like the post screen of Qiita in Rails6.

Click here for reference code

By the way, I learned Rails from GW and created a blog that implements this editor function. (Built with Heroku, GCS) If you are interested, please check out the local spots in the eastern part of Shizuoka prefecture. Surugabu

environment

Mac OS 10.15.4 Ruby 2.6.3p62 Rails 6.0.2.2

About the function to use

It is implemented mainly using three OSS and functions.

• SimpleMDE
• Inline Attachment
• Active Storage

SimpleMDE

A great OSS that turns the textarea tag on your browser into a Markdown editor. It is also equipped with various functions such as an automatic save function.

Link

Inline Attachment

It easily implements file transmission with Ajax by dragging and dropping from the browser. In combination with SimpleMDE, dragged and dropped images are sent asynchronously and the uploaded result is reflected in the editor.

Link

Active Storage

File upload functionality built into Rails. You can easily implement the file upload function by using this, and it is an excellent one that also supports uploading to cloud storage such as AWS, Azure, GCP.

procedure

Creation of PJ and various installations

#Rails project creation
rails new markdown_drag_and_drop

#Install active storage
rails active_storage:install
rails db:migrate

#Installation of required js module
yarn add simplemde
yarn add inline-attachment

Disable turbolinks

By default, Rails includes turbolinks that force regular websites into partial DOM changes like SPA for speed. However, it is often bad for implementation with js, so I disabled it this time.

app/javascript/packs/application.js

//Invalidation
// require("turbolinks").start()

erb:app/views/layouts/application.html.erb

<!-- 'data-turbolinks-track': 'reload'Delete-->
<%= stylesheet_link_tag 'application', media: 'all' %>
<%= javascript_pack_tag 'application' %>

Creating models, controllers and views

Create a template with scaffold. The content is a field that saves Markdown as a string.

rails g scaffold article content:text

Place a textarea on the form screen that will be the Markdown editor.

erb:app/views/articles/_from.html.erb

<!--Js used on the screen(Described later) -->
<%= javascript_pack_tag 'article' %>

<%= form_with(model: article, local: true) do |form| %>
 <!--Abbreviation-->

<div class="field">
    <%= form.label :content %>
    <%= form.text_area :content, { id: "editor"} %>
</div>

<div class="actions">
    <%= form.submit %>
</div>
<% end %>

Create js to read on the screen.

--Textarea editor --Setting to communicate with ajax when dragged and dropped in the editor

to hold. The process to communicate with ajax will be created later.

app/javascript/packs/article.js

import "inline-attachment/src/inline-attachment";
import "inline-attachment/src/codemirror-4.inline-attachment";
import 'simplemde/dist/simplemde.min.css'
import SimpleMDE from "simplemde";
import Rails from '@rails/ujs'

window.onload = function () {
  //Make textarea a Markdown editor
  const simplemde = new SimpleMDE({
    element: document.getElementById("editor"),
  });
  //Drag the image into the editor&Processing when dropped
  inlineAttachment.editors.codemirror4.attach(simplemde.codemirror, {
    uploadUrl: "/articles/attach", //Destination URL to POST
    uploadFieldName: "image", //File field name(Key when fetching with params)
    allowedTypes: ['image/jpeg', 'image/png', 'image/jpg', 'image/gif'],
    extraHeaders: { "X-CSRF-Token": Rails.csrfToken() }, //CSRF measures
  });
};

Creating a process for sending a file

Create a model for sending files with Active Storage.

rails g model attachment

app/models/attachment.rb

class Attachment < ApplicationRecord
    has_one_attached :image
end

Add the process for ajax communication to the controller created by scaffold. Save the image and return the URL in JSON. Since filename is a parameter that inlineAttachment receives by default, match it.

app/controllers/articles_controller.rb

class ArticlesController < ApplicationController
  ...
  def attach
    attachment = Attachment.create! image: params[:image]
    render json: { filename: url_for(attachment.image) }
  end
  ...
end

Add to the routing.

routes.rb

  post 'articles/attach', to: 'articles#attach'

Operation check

If you execute it, drag and drop it into the editor, and Markdown for the image link is output, it is successful.

rails db:migrate
rails s

Image resizing

Instead of returning the uploaded image as it is If you want to use what you want to resize, you can also return the compressed version with variant. Active Storage also does compression, so it's easy.

app/models/attachment.rb

class Attachment < ApplicationRecord
  has_one_attached :image

  def image_compressed
    if image.attached?
      image.variant(resize_to_fit: [700, 600]).processed
    end
  end
end

Summary and impressions

I showed you how to create a Markdown editor that allows you to drag and drop images in Rails 6. I recently started using Rails, and although I have to remember various implicit rules, it's easy because various processes can be easily implemented.

reference

https://github.com/sparksuite/simplemde-markdown-editor/issues/328