Display optional db data

Rails
1

ive got a few models that may or may not have some data: urls / phone
numbers / dates / times / etc
whats the best way to test and format this data for displaying on a
webpage?

the way im thinking of doing it would be a few lines of code to:

  • test if not null
  • format properly
  • display in proper div / ul container

and then do that for each thing
is there a cleaner way to do this?

2

could someone perhaps advise on how to move some of this logic from
view to model?
like ‘get_price_info’ and it returns the properly formatted string or
nothing?
or should these tests be performed in the view?

3

On Thu, Apr 15, 2010 at 11:05 AM, dan [email protected] wrote:

could someone perhaps advise on how to move some of this logic from
view to model?
like ‘get_price_info’ and it returns the properly formatted string or
nothing?
or should these tests be performed in the view?

I’m not sure what you’re looking for here; if you have a view with e.g.
<%= @thing.foo %>
and this particular “foo” is nil, nothing will display, otherwise you
get
the value of “foo”.

If that’s not the behavior you want, please describe in more detail.

–
Hassan S. ------------------------ [email protected]
twitter: @hassan

4

if thing.foo is a date, price, url or something else that requires
formatting, it requires more than =thing.foo
and since you cant format nil, a test needs to be performed before
trying to format said data
my views are getting littered with these tests and formats, sometimes
there nested:
is there price data?
is there an advance purchase price?
is there an advance purchase expiry date?

its getting kinda ugly in my view
whats the best way to handle this?

5

On Thu, Apr 15, 2010 at 11:36 AM, dan [email protected] wrote:

if thing.foo is a date, price, url or something else that requires
formatting, it requires more than =thing.foo
and since you cant format nil, a test needs to be performed before
trying to format said data
my views are getting littered with these tests and formats, sometimes
there nested:

Some possible approaches:

  1. make the default in the database some value other than null.

  2. <%= @thing.foo.format rescue nil %>

  3. <%= @thing.foo.nil? ? " N/A " : @thing.foo.format %>

I’m sure someone will suggest others, but HTH :slight_smile:

–
Hassan S. ------------------------ [email protected]
twitter: @hassan

6

The logic for this probably belong in view helpers and not in the
model since its really about how the data is displayed and not about
how the data behaves.

7

It would be easier if you post the actual view code, and then somebody
can show you how you might refactor it by moving logic into helpers

8

anyone have a good example of how best to move this logic to a helper?