Rails Integration for TinyMCE

The tinymce-rails gem integrates the TinyMCE editor with the Rails asset pipeline.

This gem is compatible with Rails 3.1.1 and higher (including Rails 4).

Support for TinyMCE 4 is currently available in the tinymce-4 branch. For the time being, parallel versions of TinyMCE (3.5.x and 4.x) will be maintained. However TinyMCE 4 will eventually be promoted to the master branch.

Instructions

1. Add tinymce-rails to your Gemfile

gem 'tinymce-rails'

Be sure to add to the global group, not the assets group. Then run bundle install.

2. Create a config/tinymce.yml file with your global configuration options:

theme_advanced_toolbar_location: top
theme_advanced_toolbar_align: left
theme_advanced_statusbar_location: bottom
theme_advanced_buttons3_add:
  - tablecontrols
  - fullscreen
plugins:
  - table
  - fullscreen

The Rails server no longer needs to be restarted when this file is updated in development mode.

To define multiple configuration sets, follow this syntax (a default configuration must be specified):

default:
  theme_advanced_toolbar_align: left
  theme_advanced_buttons3_add:
    - tablecontrols
  plugins:
    - table

alternate:
  theme_advanced_toolbar_location: top
  theme_advanced_toolbar_align: left
  theme_advanced_buttons3_add:
    - tablecontrols
  plugins:
    - table

See the TinyMCE 3 Documentation for a full list of configuration options.

3. Include the TinyMCE assets

Use one of the following options to include TinyMCE assets.

(1) Add to your application.js:

//= require tinymce

or (2) with jQuery integration:

//= require tinymce-jquery

(3) The TinyMCE assets can be included on a per-page basis using the tinymce_assets helper:

<%= tinymce_assets %>
#=> <script type="text/javascript" src="/assets/tinymce.js">

4. Initialize TinyMCE

For each textarea that you want to use with TinyMCE, add the "tinymce" class and ensure it has a unique ID:

<%= text_area_tag :editor, "", :class => "tinymce", :rows => 40, :cols => 120 %>

Then invoke the tinymce helper to initialize TinyMCE:

<%= tinymce %>

Custom options can be passed to tinymce to override the global options specified in config/tinymce.yml:

<%= tinymce :theme => "simple", :language => "de", :plugins => ["inlinepopups", "paste"] %>

Alternate configurations defined in 'config/tinymce.yml' can be used with:

<%= tinymce :alternate %>

Manual Initialization

Using the tinymce helper and global configuration file is entirely optional. The tinyMCE.init function can be invoked manually if desired.

<%= text_area_tag :editor, "", :rows => 40, :cols => 120 %>

<script type="text/javascript">
  tinyMCE.init({
    mode: 'textareas',
    theme: 'advanced'
  });
</script>

Language Packs

See the tinymce-rails-langs gem for additional language packs for TinyMCE. The tinymce helper will use the current locale as the language if available, falling back to English if the core language files are missing.

Custom Plugins & Skins

To use custom plugins or skins, simply add the files to your asset load path so that they are locatable at a path beneath tinymce/plugins/ or tinymce/themes/advanced/skins/.

For example, a plugin called mycustomplugin could have its main JS file at app/assets/javascripts/tinymce/plugins/mycustomplugin/editor_plugin.js.

You should also ensure that your custom paths are added to the asset precompile paths.

Using tinymce-rails as an Engine Dependency

Ensure that you explicitly require tinymce-rails within your engine file. Including tinymce-rails as a dependency in your gemspec is not enough.

Updating

When new versions of TinyMCE are released, simply update the tinymce-rails gem to the latest version. There is no need to run any extra rake tasks (apart from rake assets:precompile).