I am using wmd markdown editor on a project and had a question:

When I post the form containing the markdown text area, it (as expected) posts html to the server. However, say upon server-side validation something fails and I need to send the user back to edit their entry, is there anyway to refill the textarea with just the markdown and not the html? Since as I have it set up, the server only has access to the post data (which is in the form of html) so I can't seem to think of a way to do this. Any ideas? Preferably a non-javascript based solution.

Update: I found an html to markdown converter called markdownify. I guess this might be the best solution for displaying the markdown back to the user...any better alternatives are welcome!

Update 2: I found this post on SO and I guess there is an option to send the data to the server as markdown instead of html. Are there any downsides to simply storing the data as markdown in the database? What about displaying it back to the user (outside of an editor)? Maybe it would be best to post both versions (html AND markdown) to the server...

SOLVED: I can simply use php markdown to convert the markdown to html serverside.