optional local variables in rails partial templates: how do I get out of the (defined? foo) mess?

Question

I\'ve been a bad kid and used the following syntax in my partial templates to set default values for local variables if a value wasn\'t explicitly defined in the :locals has

Answer 1

I think this should be repeated here (from http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionView/Base.html):

If you need to find out whether a certain local variable has been assigned a value in a particular render call, you need to use the following pattern:

<% if local_assigns.has_key? :headline %>
  Headline: <%= headline %>
<% end %>

Testing using defined? headline will not work. This is an implementation restriction.