A tiny empty shortcut

I think I've written about this before, by monkeypatching an empty method on the Array class that takes a block and executes it only if the array is empty.  But anyway, for some of you, you might see something like this taking place often:

	<ul>
	<% if @messages.empty? %>
	There are no messages
	<% else %>
	<% @messages.each do |m| %>
	<li><%= m.body %></li>
	<% end %>
	</ul>

view raw The old way of having an empty message.rhtml hosted with ❤ by GitHub

To clean it up a little, you can do:

	<ul>
	<% if @messages.each do |m| %>
	<li><%= m.body %></li>
	<% end.empty? %>
	<li>There are no messages</li>
	<% end %>
	</ul>

view raw Some other way of having an empty message.rhtml hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Or else if each of your items is a partial, use the :collection method.

Posted via email from The Web and all that Jazz