tinymce adding extra ul tags on loading - tinymce

Question

Here is my issue plain and simple. I have an input field with this exact data:
<ul>
<li>test</li>
<li>test</li>
</ul>
On load of tinymce if I looked at the code it has in its field it shows this:
<br>
<ul>
<ul>
<li>test</li>
</ul>
</ul>
<br>
<ul>
<ul>
<li>test</li>
</ul>
</ul>
So, as you can see upon loading it is adding extra ul tags and breaks to the field.
Now here is my current config(Note I do have the latest tinymce version 4.8.5, but this also happens with an older version I have of 4.6.5):
tinyMCE.init({
mode : "exact",
elements : "ta_description, ta_restrictions",
// General options
forced_root_block : false,
theme : "modern",
width : "100%",
height : "250px",
menubar: false,
toolbar1: "undo redo styleselect fontselect fontsizeselect | bold italic forecolor backcolor",
toolbar2: "code image link table | alignleft aligncenter alignright alignjustify | bullist numlist | outdent indent",
plugins: [
"advlist autolink lists link image charmap print preview hr anchor pagebreak",
"searchreplace wordcount visualblocks visualchars code fullscreen",
"insertdatetime media nonbreaking save table contextmenu directionality",
"emoticons template paste textcolor colorpicker textpattern moxiemanager"
]
});
This is causing an issue because everytime I save, the process repeats and it adds even more ul tags. Which is similar to why I have forced_root_block disabled because on save it kept adding more and more <p> tags. Now I have found that marking br tags as an invalid element prevents this behavior, but those are needed for linebreaks, I mention that because I am not sure if that helps narrow down where an issue may be.
Note: I am not using wordpress.
Update: This config ended up working for us.
<script defer="defer" type="text/javascript">
tinyMCE.init({
mode : "exact",
elements : "ta_description, ta_restrictions",
// General options
forced_root_block : 'div',
invalid_elements : 'br',
theme : "modern",
width : "100%",
height : "250px",
menubar: false,
toolbar1: "undo redo styleselect fontselect fontsizeselect | bold italic forecolor backcolor",
toolbar2: "code image link table | alignleft aligncenter alignright alignjustify | bullist numlist | outdent indent",
plugins: [
"advlist autolink lists link image charmap print preview hr anchor pagebreak",
"searchreplace wordcount visualblocks visualchars code fullscreen",
"insertdatetime media nonbreaking save table contextmenu directionality",
"emoticons template paste textcolor colorpicker textpattern moxiemanager"
]
});
</script>

Answer 1

If I load your content into TinyMCE I don't see it making all of these extra tags:
http://fiddle.tinymce.com/d4gaab/5
I would suspect there is something in your pre/post processing of the content when its loaded into or extracted from the editor that is causing this to happen.