Avoiding nil in Rails views

Question

I'm sure this has been asked already, but I can't find the answer.

I have a Project model, which has a belongs_to relationship with my Client model. A client has a name, but a project doesn't necessarily have a client.

In my view, I've got code like this:

<%=h project.client && project.client.name %>

because if the project doesn't have a client then trying to access project.client.name causes a NoMethodError (nil doesn't have a method called name).

The question is, is it acceptable to have this kind of nil checking in the view, or should I be looking for another way around it?

Answer 1

Just use

project.client.try(:name)

Answer 2

I think its perfectly acceptable - this is view logic, you are more or less deciding whether or not to show portions of your view, based on whether there is data.