Question

controller

@articles = current_user.articles

view

<% @articles.each do |article| %>
  <%= link_to "#{article.title} , #{article.author.name}" articles_path%>
<% end %>

Sometimes the article has no author, so is null in the database, which results in the following error

You have a nil object when you didn’t expect it!
The error occurred while evaluating nil.name

I still want to output the article title in this scenario, whats the best way to do this please?

Answer 1

Add a new instance method to your Article model.

class Article
  def title_and_author
    returning "" do |s|
      s << title
      s << ", " << author.name if author.name?
    end
  end
end

then in your view

<% @articles.each do |article| %>
  <%= link_to article.title_and_author, articles_path %>
<% end %>