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

That code can be shortened to:

<%= @messages.empty? ? 'You have no messages.' : @messages.collect { |msg| formatted_msg(msg) }.join(msg_delimiter) %>

Comments:

formatted_msg() - helper method which adds formatting to the message

msg_delimiter - variable containing delimiter like "\n" or "
"

BTW I'd suggest to use empty? method instead of blank? for checking an array, because a) its name is more concise :) and b) blank? is an ActiveSupport extension method which won't work outside Rails.