Ruby on Rails/Examples/HTML4.01

Rails generates XHTML by default. It can be made to generate HTML4.01 that can be validated with The W3C HTML validator.

DOCTYPE edit

Layouts begin with the HTML4.01 Strict DOCTYPE:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">

ApplicationHelper edit

application_helper.rb looks something like this:

module Html4ize

  # Supports making alternative versions of Rails helpers that output HTML
  # 4.01 markup as opposed to XHTML.  Example:
  #
  #   html4_version_of :submit_tag
  #
  # ..which creates a submit_tag_html4 helper that takes the same options as
  # submit_tag but which renders HTML 4.01.
  #
  def html4_version_of  helper_name
    define_method "#{helper_name}_html4" do |*args|
      html = send  helper_name, *args
      html.gsub! " />", ">"
      html
    end
  end

  def html4_versions_of *helper_names
    helper_names.each do |helper_name|
      html4_version_of  helper_name
    end
  end

  class << self
    def included  receiver
      receiver.extend Html4ize
    end
  end

end


# Methods added to this helper will be available to all templates in the application.
module ApplicationHelper

  include Html4ize

  html4_versions_of :stylesheet_link_tag, :image_tag, :text_field, :submit_tag

  ...

end


# Extend FormBuilder with our own helper methods
class ActionView::Helpers::FormBuilder

  include Html4ize

  html4_versions_of :text_field, :check_box, :hidden_field, :submit

  ...

end

Views edit

Views can then refer to the newly-wrapped helpers:

  ...

  <%= image_tag_html4 "logo.png" %>

  ...

  <% form_for :person do |form| %>

    <div><b>Name:</b><%= form.text_field_html4 :name %></div>

    ...

    <div class="submit"><%= form.submit_html4 "Save" %></div>

  <% end %>