http://snippets.dzone.com/posts Sat, 26 Jul 2008 22:54:26 GMT DZone Snippets: Bjh5537's Code Snippets http://snippets.dzone.com/posts/show/5289 In Ruby the idiom || can be used to provide a default value if something is nil. This can't be done with blank since an empty string is not nil and will short-circuit the || operator, leaving most of us to to do something like "name.blank? ? 'John Doe' : name". Here's a way to do this OO-style: <br /> <br /><code> <br />class Object <br /> def or_if_blank(value) <br /> self.respond_to?(:blank) && self.blank? ? value : self <br /> end <br />end <br /> <br />name.or_if_blank("John Doe") <br /></code> Sat, 29 Mar 2008 01:59:01 GMT http://snippets.dzone.com/posts/show/5289 bjh5537 (Rails Garden)