Question

Orginal Question

This is a really horrible method, which checks for equality on base of the code but case agnostic

def ==(another_country)
   (code.nil? ? nil : code.downcase) == (another_country.code.nil? ? nil : another_country.code.downcase) unless another_country.nil?
end

Can you point my in the right direction how to write this more elegant w/o reliying on ugly if else structures?

This is the solution I ended up using (+RSpecs)

# Country model
class Country < ActiveRecord::Base
  attr_accessible :code

  def ==(another_country)
    code.to_s.downcase == another_country.code.to_s.downcase rescue false
  end
end

Extensive Tests:

# RSpec
describe Country do
   describe 'equality based solely on Country.code' do
      before do
        @country_code_de = FactoryGirl.build(:country, :code => 'de')
      end

      it 'should be equal if Country.code is equal' do
        other_country_code_de = FactoryGirl.build(:country, :code => 'de')
        @country_code_de.should == other_country_code_de
      end

      it 'should be not equal if Country.code is not equal' do
        country_code_usa = FactoryGirl.build(:country, :code => 'usa')
        @country_code_de.should_not == country_code_usa
      end

      it 'should be case insensitive' do
        country_code_de_uppercase = FactoryGirl.build(:country, :code => 'DE')
        @country_code_de.should == country_code_de_uppercase
      end

      it 'should not rely on id for equality' do
        @country_code_de.id = 0
        country_code_usa = FactoryGirl.build(:country, :code => 'usa', :id => 0)
        @country_code_de.should_not == country_code_usa
      end

      it 'should be not equal if Country.code of one Country is nil' do
        country_code_nil = FactoryGirl.build(:country, :code => nil)
        @country_code_de.should_not == country_code_nil
      end

      it 'should be equal if Country.code for both countries is nil' do
        country_code_nil = FactoryGirl.build(:country, :code => nil)
        other_country_code_nil = FactoryGirl.build(:country, :code => nil)
        country_code_nil.should == other_country_code_nil
      end

      it 'should be not equal if other Country is nil' do
        @country_code_de.should_not == nil
      end

      it 'should be not equal if other object is not a Country' do
        @country_code_de.should_not == 'test'
      end

      it 'should be equal for descendants of Country with same Country.code' do
        class CountryChild < Country
        end
        country_child = CountryChild.new(:code => 'de')
        @country_code_de.should == country_child
      end
    end
end

Answer 1

How about this,

def ==(another_country)
   return false if code.blank? # Remove this line if you want to return true if code and antoher_country.code are nil
   code.to_s.downcase == another_country.to_s.code.downcase rescue false
end

Here if any of code, another_country or another_country.code is nil, it will through up an exception and rescue false statement will return false value.

If everything goes well, the comparison will happen and true or false will be returned based on the input.