Question

Let’s say I have this in a view:

<%= text_field_tag 'foo', params[:foo] %>

Of course this pre-populates the input’s value using the params’ value for ‘foo’. However, I’m using some nesting/arrays for the input names:

<%= text_field_tag 'filters[person][name]' %>

Because params[:filters] and/or params[:filters][:person] may not be present, in order to pre-populate the value, is there a better way to specify the value than the following?

<%= text_field_tag 'filters[person][name]', (params[:filters][:person][:name] if params[:filters] && params[:filters][:person])  %>

This gets messy really fast when more levels are needed. Thanks.

Answer 1

Replace:

 (params[:filters][:person][:name] if params[:filters] && params[:filters][:person])

With:

 params[:filters].try(:[],:person).try(:[],:name)

Notice you could build some pretty helper based on the try method.