Question

I find myself often writing statements equivalent to:

deleted_at = Time.at(data[:deleted_at]) if !data[:deleted_at].nil?

i’d like to be able to write this in a more concise way. Any suggestions?

Sometimes I write this as:

deleted_at = Time.at(i) if !(i = data[:deleted_at]).nil?

But I think this makes the code harder to read so I hope there is some nicer way to do this.

Answer 1

I use ‘unless’ since I find it more readable:

deleted_at = Time.at(data[:deleted_at]) unless data[:deleted_at].nil?

or you could even use:

deleted_at = Time.at(data[:deleted_at]) if data[:deleted_at]