How to create a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) Editor?

How would you create a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) Editor? I found some resources online such as summernote and TinyMce but they seem overly complicated! But if I do use any of these API's, how would I be able to pull the html from the editor then send it through to the backend where it can be sanitized and put into the database?

I am using Node.js and MongoDB

via Tommy Wan