Submitting forms in Rails - Paragraph breaks are converted into spaces - html

Question

I am trying to create articles for my blog. I got the controller working correctly, except for a spacing issue.
In my text-area field, when I type in paragraphs and hit return the paragraphs are morphed into one paragraph.
This is what the output looks like when I view the source code
<li><strong>jksdf</strong></li></br>
<li>This is the first sentence.
This is the second sentence.
This is the third sentence.</li>
When I view it in development, it looks like this
This is the first sentence. This is the second sentence. This is the third sentence.
Stack Overflow managed to get this to work in their app, so why can't I?
Here is my Index page
<ul class = 'articles-list'>
<% #article.each do |article| %>
<li><strong><%= article.title %></strong></li></br>
<li><%= article.body %></li>
<% if signed_in? && current_user.admin? %>
<li><%= link_to 'Edit', edit_article_path(#article)%></li>
<li><%= link_to 'Delete', article, method: :delete%></li>
<% end %>
<% end %>
</ul>
My New Articles page with the form
<h3>New Article</h3>
<div class = 'center'>
<%= form_for #article do |f| %>
<p>
<%= f.label :title, class: 'marker' %>
<%= f.text_field :title %>
</p>
<p>
<%= f.label :body, class: 'marker' %>
<%= f.text_area :body, :rows => "15" %>
</p>
<p>
<%= f.submit 'Submit', :class => 'btn btn-success' %>
</p>
<% end %>
</div>
My Migration File
class CreateArticles < ActiveRecord::Migration
def change
create_table :articles do |t|
t.string :title
t.text :body
t.timestamps
end
end
end
I don't see why it's rendering a space instead of a paragraph break.
Do I need to include linebreaks in my text box? I can't use gsub, that won't work either.
Edit: It might have to do with using the li html tag. Maybe that forces all text to one line.
Edit: No that doesn't work either. I tried replacing ul and li tags with div tags, and I still received the same error.
I've tried the following
Using Line Breaks in the text-area box
Replacing UL and LI tags with DIV tags

Answer 1

Try using simple_format on the displayed text:
<%= simple_format article.body %>
It should convert single line breaks into <br> tags and wrap paragraphs (bordered by double line breaks) in <p> tags. HTML essentially ignores line breaks which is why you need some markup inserted.
If you need additional formatting options you'll probably want to look at integrating markdown (or something similar) in your application using something like Redcarpet.