Question

I have a case statement and I am trying to use the ternary operator to do additional conditional checking. But it errors out.

here is a sample of the code

case url
when partner_x_url then Rails.env.development? ? partner_signup_url : partner_signup_url :protocol => "https"
.
.
.
else regular_signup_url
end

The really weird thing is that it works if use the following

case url
when partner_x_url then if Rails.env.development?; partner_signup_url; else partner_signup_url :protocol => "https"; end
.
.
.
else regular_signup
end

Any ideas of why this is happening?

Answer 1

You’re missing the ? operator:

when partner_x_url then Rails.env.development? ? partner_signup_url : partner_signup_url :protocol => "https"

Happens to me all the time with a method ending in a question mark 🙂

EDIT: Since you now added that operator, I suspect it has to do with operator precedence. Try to avoid those kind of issues with using parentheses around function arguments:

when partner_x_url then Rails.env.development? ? partner_signup_url : partner_signup_url(:protocol => "https")

Example: Without function parentheses, you get a syntax error:

1.9.3p125 :006 > case @foo when true then true ? puts "foo" : puts "bar" end
SyntaxError: (irb):6: syntax error, unexpected tSTRING_BEG, expecting keyword_do or '{' or '('
case @foo when true then true ? puts "foo" : puts "bar" end
                                      ^                                                ^

With parentheses, you don’t:

1.9.3p125 :007 > case @foo when true then true ? puts("foo") : puts("bar") end
 => nil