creating name helper, to split first and last names apart

Question

I'm looking for some help on how to take an attribute and process it through a method to return something different. But I've never done this before and I' not sure where to start. I thought trying to change a name:string attribute from "George Washington" or "John Quincy Adams" into first names only "George" and "John".

I thought maybe a helper method would be best, such as

users_helper.rb

def first_name

end

and then call @user.name.first_name, would this be initially how it would work? Can someone explain where I'd go next to be able to pass @user.name into the method? I've seen things like this but don't quite understand it the parenthesis...

def first_name(name)
  puts name
end

Could someone breakdown how rails/ruby does this type of thing? Thanks a lot!

Answer 1

Some people have more than two names, such as "John Clark Smith". You can choose to treat them as:

(1) first_name: "John", last_name: "Smith"

  def first_name
    if name.split.count > 1
      name.split.first
    else
      name
    end
  end

  def last_name
    if name.split.count > 1
      name.split.last
    end
  end

(2) first_name: "John Clark", last_name: "Smith"

  def first_name
    if name.split.count > 1
      name.split[0..-2].join(' ')
    else
      name
    end
  end

  def last_name
    if name.split.count > 1
      name.split.last
    end
  end

(3) first_name: "John", last_name: "Clark Smith"

  def first_name
    name.split.first
  end

  def last_name
    if name.split.count > 1
      name.split[1..-1].join(' ')
    end
  end

The above examples assume that if the name contains less than 2 words then it is a first name.