Question

In my code, Author has_many Books, so I could do something like:

@author.books

If the author has no books, when @author.books is called, I’d like a default book object with that author’s info already filled out (i.e. author_id), something like:

class Author < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :books

  def books
    the_books || default_book
  end
end

That’s obviously not real code, but it demonstrates what I’m trying to do.

Answer 1

How about:

class Author < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :books
  alias :__books__ :books

  def books
    result = __books__
    result.empty? ? default_books : result
  end

  private
  def default_books
    # ...
  end
end