Simon Willison’s Weblog

Should I store markdown instead of HTML into database fields?

8th September 2013

My answer to Should I store markdown instead of HTML into database fields? on Quora

You should store the exact format that was entered by the user.

- This lets you offer an “edit” feature without round-tripping between two formats.
- This makes debugging much easier
- Related: if you need to investigate a security bug, having the original input is essential.

If you’re worried about performance, you can cache the transformed HTML somewhere—or even denormalize it to an extra table column. Just make sure you always have the original input available.