Rails: An elegant way to display a message when there are no elements in database

Question

I realized that I\'m writing a lot of code similar to this one:

<% unless @messages.blank? %>
  <% @messages.each do |message|  %>
    <%# cod         


        

Answer 1

If you use the :collection parameter to render e.g. render :partial => 'message', :collection => @messages then the call to render will return nil if the collection is empty. This can then be incorporated into an || expression e.g.

<%= render(:partial => 'message', :collection => @messages) || 'You have no messages' %>

In case you haven't come across it before, render :collection renders a collection using the same partial for each element, making each element of @messages available through the local variable message as it builds up the complete response. You can also specify a divider to be rendered in between each element using :spacer_template => "message_divider"