TinyMCE, Rails and YouTube

I don’t know how many people out there care, but I guess little tidbits of information like this end up useful to somebody, eventually (thanks, Google).

Yesterday I had to fulfill the following requirements: create a Ruby on Rails CMS where a user can enter a stylized description without knowing HTML, BUT can also embed a YouTube video when necessary.

Here’s the solution:

1. Grab and install the TinyMCE plugin for Rails.
2. Use the following code in your controller:

   uses_tiny_mce(:options => {:theme => ‘advanced’,
   :extended_valid_elements => “object[classid|codebase|width|height|align],
   param[name|value],
   embed[quality|type|
   pluginspage|width|height|src|align|wmode]”
   })

   The advanced theme mode ensures that you have an “HTML” mode in your TinyMCE editor, and can therefore paste YouTube code. The extended_valid_elements attribute is essential and tells TinyMCE to avoid stripping out those tags. The full API for TinyMCE is here.

3. Unfortunately, there is a bug in the version of TinyMCE used by the plugin. You will see that your embed tag is stripped out, despite the extended_valid_elements attribute. The solution is easy. First, grab the latest version of TinyMCE. Then, go into the public\javascripts\tiny_mce directory of your app and replace these files with the newer ones: tiny_mce.js, tiny_mce_popup.js, and tiny_mce_src.js.

You should be all set.