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Ember Editor Component - 24 Oct 2015

If you’re looking to add your favorite WYSIWYG editor to your Ember application, it can be difficult knowing where to start. Here’s a quick breakdown on setting up the basics. There will be some differences between editors, but this approach has worked well for me.

Here’s what your component file should look like:

  import Ember from 'ember';
  const { set, get } = Ember;

  export default Ember.Component.extend({
    _editor: null,

    didInsertElement() {
      let textarea = this.element.querySelector('#editor');
      // Must be changed.
      let editor = new YourEditor({ element: textarea });
      // Must be changed.
      editor.on('change', () => {
        // Must be changed.
        set(this, 'value', editor.value());
      set(this, '_editor', editor);

    willDestroyElement() {
      // Must be changed.
      get(this, '_editor').destroy();
      set(this, '_editor', null);

You’ll need to make some changes depending on the API your editor provides. The first change you’ll need to make is to new YourEditor({}). This value will need to be changed to whatever method is used to instantiate your editor.

The second change will be for the change event. Most editors provide a method for watching for changes to the editor value. You’ll want to replace .on('change') with that method.

You’ll also need to replace editor.value() with the method used to get the current HTML/Markdown value for your editor. It might be something like editor.getHTML().

The final change you’ll need to make is to the get(this, '_editor').destroy(); call. This will need to be updated to whatever method is used to destroy your editor instance.

Your component template will look like:

  {{textarea value=value id="editor"}}

Finally, when you want to add an editor for a specific text input, you can use the following code:

  {{your-editor-component value=post.content}}