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 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 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 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 %>