Question

How can I accomplish this?

<% for agent in @broker.agents %>   ...   <% if agent.cell %><span class='cell-number'>Cell: <%= agent.cell %></span><% end %>   ... <% end %> 

I want to test to see if the agent has a cell number, and if so, display what’s inside the conditional. What I have currently doesn’t seem to work; it just displays ‘Cell: ‘.

Thoughts?

Answer 1

This is what you asked for:

<% for agent in @broker.agents %>   <% unless agent.cell.blank? %>     <span class='cell-number'>Cell: <%= agent.cell %></span>   <% end %> <% end %> 

The cell? method works whether cell is nil or an empty string. Rails adds similar functions for all ActiveRecord attributes. This will look a little nicer:

<% for agent in @broker.agents %>   <span class='cell-number'>     Cell: <%= agent.cell? ? 'none given' : agent.cell %>   </span> <% end %> 

The question mark and colon form a quick ‘if ? then : else’ statement. There are two question marks in the code above because one is part of the method name cell? and the other is a part of the if/then/else construction.