Question

I’ve got a view which looks like this:

<p><%= stage.end_date.strftime("%A, %d %B %Y")%></p>

Sometimes stage.end_date returns null and that’s ok, but Ruby throws a NoMethodError.

I’m quite new to Ruby so I want to know how I should I deal with missing/null varibles in views

• Do I need to test for stage.end_date in the view? because that feels ugly
• Do I need to make sure
  that stage.end_date isn’t null, if so
  that isn’t a job for my view is it?
• Is there a way I can get ruby not
  worry out about stage.end_date and
  not throw an errow?

Advice most welcome

Answer 1

You can do this a bunch of ways, but here are two:

<p><%= stage.end_date.strftime("%A, %d %B %Y") unless stage.end_date.nil? %></p>

or in your stage model, create:

def end_date_formatted
  return "" if end_date.nil?
  end_date.strftime("%A, %d %B %Y")
end