Re: If-Else Conditionals in Views

I find myself doing the following quite a lot:

<% if user %><%= user.name %><% else %>Anonymous<% end %>

Is there any simpler way to handle the else? This is a simple example
so it’s not really an issue… but for more complicated tests this gets
quite tedious.

For me, I moved the whole thing into a helper.

Because usernames are a potential relationship that I may want to give
more information on, I created a helper that did this, parameterized
by the user object.

In the simple case, it does what you show. In other cases it will
return a link to the user’s information. If the user is the favorite
of the current user, it may throw in a span tag so that I can colour
the link differently, or include a small inline image.

In my view, I’ll have something like:
<%= render_username post.author %>

Keeps the view clean, and still provides the flexibility I want, plus
it keeps things nice and DRY.

Brad

Bradley M.