Re: [Rails] Re: Find Company Name not ID

On Sat, Jul 21, 2012 at 7:44 PM, James Harris <lists@ruby-forum.com> wrote:
> Using Walters solution has worked. contact.company.try(:company_name)
>
> So my understanding of this now is that because some of the contact
> records have no company defined (a nil object or NilClass). By using
> .try it responds nil if no company is found.
>
> So does that mean that if I have a field that uses a foreign key but is
> not required I should use eg. try(*a, &b)? Or is there another solution?

First, is it OK that a contact has no company, or is that a data error
that should have been caught by validations?

If it's OK to have a nil company association, then the question is: how
many of these potential error-generating statements do you have? If
it's only one or two, you can use the `try` approach above or

1) Use a rescue:
contact.company.company_name rescue ''

2) Test for the existence of company:
if contact.company
contact.company.company_name
end

3) Write a helper to return empty values for nil companies:
# untested example follows :-)

company_info_for(contact.company, '')
# replaces contact.company.company_name in view

def company_info_for(company, attr)
defaults = { :company_name => '' }
return defaults'attr] if company.nil?
company.send(attr)
end

--
Hassan Schroeder ------------------------ hassan.schroeder@gmail.com
http://about.me/hassanschroeder
twitter: @hassan

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