Easy way of dealing with nil properties in templates?

Rails
1

Is there an easy way to deal with nil properties in
templates? All I’m aware of are these methods, and
it’s quite tedious and surely violates DRY.

<%= @member.name unless @member.name.nil? %>
<%= @member.name.to_is %>
<%= “#{@member.name}” %>

csn

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2

Yeah. You can also put begin/end around templates,
actions, probably handle a nil exception in
rescue_action_in_public, or even have database
defaults be ‘’ rather than null, but I’m not keen on
any of those either.

csn

— Kelly Dwight F. [email protected]
wrote:

And if I see it enough I will move it into a helper.
in

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3

Hmmm. I don’t have much of an improvement. I tend to use

?:

Instead of your methods I would put

<%= @member.name.nil? ? ‘’ : h(@member.name) http://member.name/ %>

And if I see it enough I will move it into a helper.

But I agree, it is tedious.

-Kelly

4

You can also do this although I don’t think its any prettier :wink:

<%= @member.name rescue nil %>

-Ezra

On Feb 6, 2006, at 7:53 PM, Kelly Dwight F. wrote:

But I agree, it is tedious.
<%= @member.name.to_is %>
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-Ezra Z.
WebMaster
Yakima Herald-Republic Newspaper
[email protected]
509-577-7732

5

This is the one thing I miss about perls Template-Toolkit. If you
access an undefined value then nothings prints and you don’t get an
error. I wish there was a way in a configuration file to make erb act
this way.

6

CSN wrote:

I’m a bit puzzled by your question: <%= @member.name %> will produce the
Erb code _erbout.concat((@member.name).to_s) which, since nil.to_s ==
“”, will result in “” being appended to _erbout.

Did you mean @member == nil?
Or defined?(@member)==false?
Or @member.has_attribute?(“name”) == false?

– stefan

–
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Subscription: railsexpress.de

7

Kelly Dwight F. wrote:

Often you have some base record, with an association to another record
and
you need an attribute. For example, say you have a project task and you
want
to display the name of the person responsible – you might have:

@task.user.login

If user is undefined then you are trying to do a .login on a nil object.

You could override method_missing for NilClass to simply return nil when
an unknown method is called on nil.

Then something like…

<%= @member.name %>

will do nothing if @member==nil

require ‘pp’
class NilClass
def method_missing(*params)
return nil
end
end

pp @member.name #=> nil if @member.name not defined

This also helps with nested hashes

a= {:test=>“test”}
pp a[:test] #=> “test”
pp a[:test][:one] #=> nil
pp a[:one] #=> nil

This might have all sorts of other unintended side effects… I haven’t
tested it completely.

_Kevin

8

Kelly Dwight F. wrote:

Often you have some base record, with an association to another record and
you need an attribute. For example, say you have a project task and you want
to display the name of the person responsible – you might have:

@task.user.login

If user is undefined then you are trying to do a .login on a nil object.

<%= task.user.login rescue nil %>

seems to do the job.

– stefan

–
For rails performance tuning, see: http://railsexpress.de/blog
Subscription: railsexpress.de

9

Kevin O. wrote:

If user is undefined then you are trying to do a .login on a nil object.

You could override method_missing for NilClass to simply return nil when
an unknown method is called on nil.

don’t do this. It screws up nil’s semantics big time.

– stefan

–
For rails performance tuning, see: http://railsexpress.de/blog
Subscription: railsexpress.de

10

Often you have some base record, with an association to another record
and
you need an attribute. For example, say you have a project task and you
want
to display the name of the person responsible – you might have:

@task.user.login

If user is undefined then you are trying to do a .login on a nil object.

11

From: charlie bowman <cbowmanschool@…>
Subject: Re: Easy way of dealing with nil properties
in templates?
Date: 2006-02-07 15:53:59 GMT (1 hour and 55 minutes
ago)

This is the one thing I miss about perls
Template-Toolkit. If you
access an undefined value then nothings prints and
you don’t get an
error. I wish there was a way in a configuration
file to make erb act
this way.

Yeah, some Rails var like
‘convert_nil_properties_to_strings’ would be nice. But
then I’d also want nil METHODS and nil objects to
cause errors.

csn

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12

CSN wrote:

Is there an easy way to deal with nil properties
in
templates? All I’m aware of are these methods, and
it’s quite tedious and surely violates DRY.

<%= @member.name unless @member.name.nil? %>
<%= @member.name.to_is %>
<%= “#{@member.name}” %>

Hmm, maybe a helper function would be better.
Something like (np = nil print):

<%=np @member.name %>

I’m not sure what the ‘np’ function would look like.
Anybody?

csn

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13

Another way to handle this is to check for nil in your controller and
create
a proxy object to handle it. You don’t have to save it so it shouldn’t
change your model.

Bob S.
http://www.railtie.net/

14

— Stefan K. [email protected] wrote:

CSN wrote:

Is there an easy way to deal with nil properties
in
templates? All I’m aware of are these methods, and
it’s quite tedious and surely violates DRY.

<%= @member.name unless @member.name.nil? %>
<%= @member.name.to_is %>
<%= “#{@member.name}” %>

I’m a bit puzzled by your question: <%= @member.name
%> will produce the
Erb code _erbout.concat((@member.name).to_s) which,
since nil.to_s ==
“”, will result in “” being appended to _erbout.

That doesn’t seem to be the case for me. ‘name’ is
null in the members table, and this causes a nil
error:

<%= @member.name %>

csn

Did you mean @member == nil?
Or defined?(@member)==false?
Or @member.has_attribute?(“name”) == false?

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15

Cool :). Small change:

def default(string=‘’)
begin
yield
rescue
string
end
end

That way, this should work too:

<%= default { @post.comment.title } %>

csn

— Ezra Z. [email protected] wrote:

<%= @member.name unless @member.name.nil? %>
Anybody?
block.
Then you call it like this:
fe:
=> [1, 2, 3, 4]
WebMaster

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16

CSN wrote:

And if I see it enough I will move it into a helper.

But I agree, it is tedious.

-Kelly

If something can come back nil. and it causes trouble I tend to use
<% $name = (@member.name) ? @member.name:"" %>

then use the ‘$name’ instead. But I have found that most times RoR
handles the ‘nil’ conditions just fine.

17

Neil D. wrote :
| If something can come back nil. and it causes trouble I tend to use
| <% $name = (@member.name) ? @member.name:"" %>
|
| then use the ‘$name’ instead. But I have found that most times RoR
| handles the ‘nil’ conditions just fine.

It can be simplified into:

<% $name = @member.name || “” %>

–
Frederick R. aka Sleeper – [email protected]

Use variable names that mean something.
- The Elements of Programming Style (Kernighan & Plaugher)

18

On Feb 7, 2006, at 9:59 AM, CSN wrote:

Hmm, maybe a helper function would be better.
Something like (np = nil print):

<%=np @member.name %>

I’m not sure what the ‘np’ function would look like.
Anybody?

csn

CSN-

Here is a helper method that you can put in application_helper. It

will print the default value only if the block results in nil
otherwise it will print the statement inside the block.

def default(string=nil)
begin
yield
rescue
string
end
end

Then you call it like this:

<%= default(“Title Unavailable”) { @post.comment.title } %>

If @post.comment.title throws a nil error, it will return Title

Unavailable. But if @post.comment.title is not nil it will print its
contens.

fe:

irb(main):018:0> def default(string=nil)
irb(main):019:1> begin
irb(main):020:2* yield
irb(main):021:2> rescue
irb(main):022:2> string
irb(main):023:2> end
irb(main):024:1> end
=> nil
irb(main):025:0> bar = [1,2,3,4]
=> [1, 2, 3, 4]
irb(main):026:0> default(“No Bars!”) { bar.size }
=> 4
irb(main):027:0> default(“No Bars!”) { bar.im_with_stupid }
=> “No Bars!”

Cheers-

-Ezra Z.
Yakima Herald-Republic
WebMaster

509-577-7732
[email protected]