Integrating TinyMCE into a Rails App with Webpack: A Step-by-Step Guide

As a web developer, providing a user-friendly way for your application‘s users to input and edit rich text content is a common requirement. Whether it‘s a simple form field that needs some basic formatting options or a more advanced content management system, integrating a WYSIWYG editor can significantly enhance the user experience of your app.

One of the most popular and powerful rich text editors available is TinyMCE. In this tutorial, we‘ll walk through how to integrate TinyMCE into a Ruby on Rails application using Webpack to manage the JavaScript assets. By the end, you‘ll have a fully functional TinyMCE editor in your Rails app and understand the key steps and configuration options for customizing it to suit your needs.

What is TinyMCE?

TinyMCE is a flexible and customizable WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor that can be easily embedded into web applications. It provides users with a familiar word processor-like interface for creating formatted content, while outputting HTML behind the scenes that can be saved and rendered in your application.

Some key features of TinyMCE include:

• A familiar toolbar interface with buttons for common formatting options like bold, italic, underline, font family and size, text and background color, etc.
• Undo/redo history
• Ability to insert links, images, tables, lists and special characters
• HTML view for direct editing of the underlying markup
• Extensive configuration options and a plugin architecture for adding custom functionality

With these features, TinyMCE is a great choice for providing an intuitive yet powerful way for users to create and edit rich text content in your application.

Why Use Webpack?

In the Ruby on Rails ecosystem, there are a few different approaches you can take to integrate a JavaScript library like TinyMCE into your application. One common approach is to use the Asset Pipeline, Rails‘ built-in system for serving JavaScript, CSS, and image assets.

However, as JavaScript-heavy web applications have become more common and complex, developers have increasingly turned to more powerful tools to manage their JavaScript assets. One of the most popular choices is Webpack, a module bundler that allows you to use JavaScript modules and npm packages in your application.

Some of the key benefits of using Webpack in a Rails application include:

• Allows the use of npm to manage JavaScript package dependencies, providing access to a massive ecosystem of packages to enhance your application
• Enables the use of JavaScript modules for better code organization and reuse
• Provides features like code splitting and lazy loading to optimize application performance
• Allows easy use of transpilers like Babel for using the latest JavaScript language features while maintaining browser compatibility
• Offers powerful loaders and plugins for handling different types of assets and performing optimizations

Rails makes it relatively straightforward to integrate Webpack into a new or existing application using the webpacker gem, so it‘s a great choice for modern Rails apps that want to leverage the power and flexibility of Webpack.

Adding Webpack to a Rails Application

If you‘re starting a new Rails application and want to use Webpack from the beginning, you can simply create your application with the –webpack option:

rails new my_app --webpack

This will generate the necessary configuration files and code to use Webpack in your application out of the box.

If you have an existing Rails application that you want to add Webpack to, you can use the webpacker gem. To get started, add the webpacker gem to your Gemfile:

gem ‘webpacker‘, ‘~> 5.0‘

Then, run bundle install to install the gem.

Once the gem is installed, you can run the following command to generate the necessary Webpack configuration files:

rails webpacker:install

This will create a config/webpack directory with the Webpack configuration files, as well as an app/javascript/packs directory for your JavaScript pack files. It also adds the necessary code to your application layout to include the Webpack-bundled JavaScript in your application.

With Webpack set up, you‘re now ready to start using JavaScript modules and npm packages in your Rails application, including TinyMCE.

Installing and Configuring TinyMCE

To install TinyMCE in your Rails application, you can use yarn, the package manager that comes bundled with webpacker. Run the following command to install the tinymce package:

yarn add tinymce

This will add the tinymce package to your package.json file and install it in the node_modules directory.

Next, create a new JavaScript pack file for initializing TinyMCE. For example, you might create an app/javascript/packs/editor.js file with the following code:

import tinymce from ‘tinymce‘;

document.addEventListener(‘turbolinks:load‘, () => {
  tinymce.init({
    selector: ‘textarea.tinymce‘,
    plugins: ‘advlist autolink lists link image charmap print preview anchor‘,
    toolbar: ‘undo redo | formatselect | bold italic | alignleft aligncenter alignright alignjustify | bullist numlist outdent indent | link image‘
  });
});

This code imports the TinyMCE library and initializes it on page load, attaching it to any textarea elements with a class of tinymce. It also specifies some basic configuration options, including the plugins to load and the buttons to include in the toolbar.

You can customize these options based on your needs, refer to the TinyMCE documentation for a full list of configuration options.

Then, in any views where you want to use TinyMCE, you can simply add a textarea with the tinymce class. For example:

<%= form_with(model: @post, local: true) do |form| %>
  <div class="field">
    <%= form.label :content %>
    <%= form.text_area :content, class: ‘tinymce‘ %>
  </div>

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

With this in place, TinyMCE should now be working in your Rails application. However, you may notice that the editor has some missing styles or user interface elements. This is because TinyMCE requires some additional CSS and images to render its interface.

Importing TinyMCE Skins and Plugins

To fully render the TinyMCE user interface, you need to import the necessary CSS skins into your application. You can do this by adding the following line to your app/javascript/packs/application.js file:

import ‘tinymce/skins/ui/oxide/skin.css‘;

This imports the default "oxide" skin for TinyMCE. If you want to use a different skin, you can import it instead.

You also need to import any plugins you want to use with TinyMCE. Earlier, we specified plugins: ‘advlist autolink lists link image charmap print preview anchor‘ in the TinyMCE configuration. To use these plugins, you need to import them in your JavaScript pack file:

import ‘tinymce/plugins/advlist‘;
import ‘tinymce/plugins/autolink‘;
import ‘tinymce/plugins/lists‘;
import ‘tinymce/plugins/link‘;
import ‘tinymce/plugins/image‘;
import ‘tinymce/plugins/charmap‘;
import ‘tinymce/plugins/print‘;
import ‘tinymce/plugins/preview‘;
import ‘tinymce/plugins/anchor‘;

Add these lines to your app/javascript/packs/editor.js file, and TinyMCE should now be fully functional with the specified plugins and toolbar buttons.

Troubleshooting Common Issues

While integrating TinyMCE into a Rails application with Webpack is generally straightforward, there are a few common issues you may encounter.

One issue is conflicts with other JavaScript libraries or frameworks, particularly jQuery. TinyMCE does have a jQuery integration, but it is not required and can sometimes cause issues if you are loading both jQuery and TinyMCE separately in your application.

If you encounter issues with jQuery and TinyMCE, the first thing to try is removing any separate jQuery imports or script tags in your application layout. If you are using Webpack, you should be importing jQuery as a module in your JavaScript pack files instead.

Another common issue is missing styles or user interface elements, which is usually caused by forgetting to import the necessary skin CSS or plugin files. Double check that you have imported the skin CSS file and any plugin files you are using in your JavaScript pack file.

If you encounter issues with specific plugins not working as expected, make sure you have imported the plugin file correctly and that the plugin name matches what you have specified in the TinyMCE configuration. Some plugins may also require additional configuration options to be set.

Customizing TinyMCE

One of the strengths of TinyMCE is its extensive configuration options, which allow you to customize almost every aspect of the editor to suit your needs. Some common configuration options you may want to adjust include:

• toolbar: Specifies the buttons and button groups to include in the editor toolbar
• plugins: Specifies the plugins to load with the editor, which add additional functionality
• height: Sets the height of the editor in pixels
• min_height / max_height: Sets the minimum and maximum heights for the editor
• browser_spellcheck: Enables or disables native browser spellchecking
• content_css: Specifies a custom CSS file to use for styling editor content
• setup: Allows you to specify a callback function to execute when the editor is initialized, useful for adding custom event handlers or modifications to the editor

Refer to the TinyMCE documentation for a full list of configuration options and details on how to use them.

You can specify these configuration options when initializing TinyMCE in your JavaScript pack file, like so:

tinymce.init({
  selector: ‘textarea.tinymce‘, 
  height: 500,
  plugins: ‘advlist autolink lists link image charmap print preview anchor‘,
  toolbar: ‘undo redo | formatselect | bold italic | alignleft aligncenter alignright alignjustify | bullist numlist outdent indent | link image‘,
  content_css: ‘/path/to/custom-styles.css‘,
  setup: function (editor) {
    // Custom setup logic here 
  }
});

Feel free to experiment with different configuration options to get TinyMCE working the way you want in your application.

Alternative Integration Methods

While using Webpack is a powerful and flexible way to integrate TinyMCE into a Rails application, it‘s not the only option. For simple use cases, you may find it easier to use a more traditional approach like the tinymce-rails gem.

The tinymce-rails gem provides a simple way to integrate TinyMCE into a Rails application using the Asset Pipeline. It includes the TinyMCE source files and provides a helper method for generating the necessary HTML and JavaScript code to initialize TinyMCE.

To use tinymce-rails, you would add the gem to your Gemfile:

gem ‘tinymce-rails‘

And then run bundle install to install the gem.

Then, you would need to require the TinyMCE assets in your application.js and application.css files:

// app/assets/javascripts/application.js 
//= require tinymce-jquery

/* app/assets/stylesheets/application.css */
*= require tinymce

Finally, in your view files, you would use the tinymce helper method to initialize TinyMCE on a specific textarea:

<%= form_with(model: @post, local: true) do |form| %>
  <div class="field">
    <%= form.label :content %>
    <%= form.text_area :content, class: ‘tinymce‘ %>
    <%= tinymce %>
  </div>

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

The tinymce-rails approach can be simpler for basic usage, but it doesn‘t offer the same flexibility and customization options as the Webpack approach. It also ties you to the specific version of TinyMCE bundled with the gem, which may not always be the latest available version.

Conclusion

Integrating a powerful rich text editor like TinyMCE into your Rails application can significantly enhance the user experience for content creation and editing. With the Webpack approach outlined in this tutorial, you have a flexible and customizable way to integrate TinyMCE using JavaScript modules and npm packages.

To recap, the key steps for integrating TinyMCE with Webpack in Rails are:

1. Install the webpacker gem and set up Webpack in your Rails application
2. Install the tinymce package via yarn
3. Create a new JavaScript pack file to import and initialize TinyMCE
4. Import the necessary TinyMCE skin CSS and plugins in your pack file
5. Add textareas with a tinymce class to your view files where you want to use the TinyMCE editor

By following these steps and customizing the TinyMCE configuration to suit your needs, you can provide your application‘s users with a user-friendly and full-featured rich text editing experience.

While there are other integration approaches available, like the tinymce-rails gem, the Webpack approach offers the most flexibility and allows you to leverage the power of JavaScript modules and npm packages in your Rails application.

So go forth and add TinyMCE to your Rails application with confidence! With a little bit of setup and configuration, you‘ll have a sleek and powerful rich text editor that your users will love.