I have following code which seems to work fine:
<%if group.employees.count > 0%>
<td><%= link_to group.employees.count.to_s, {:action => 'index', :controller => 'employees'}, {:id=>group.id}%></td>
<%else%>
<td><%= link_to "Add Employee", {:action => 'new', :controller => 'employees'}%></td>
<%end%>
I'm just wondering how this can be written in more rails friendly way using unless?
I would (with dylanfm's advice in the comment underneath) write it like this:
<% if group.employees.present? %>
<td><%= link_to group.employees.count.to_s, employees_path, { :id=> "group_#{group.id}" }%></td>
<% else %>
<td><%= link_to "Add Employee", new_employee_path %></td>
<% end %>
Here I've used the employees_path and new_employee_path methods which are generated by using the routing helpers in config/routes.rb. You can read more about routing by reading the Routing from the Outside In guide.
I consider it unreadable to use unless with else. Would be better to stick with what you have.
You have an if-else branch (two possible different outcomes), so using unless would require you to change it to an unless-else branch, which is hard to understand. If-else is the way to go in this situation.
If you only had a single condition, i.e.
if foo != 0
do_something(bar)
end
It could be rewritten as
do_something(bar) unless foo == 0
You can try this way:
<% if group.employees.any? %>
<td><%= link_to group.employees.count, employees_path, { :id=> dom_id(group) } %></td>
<% else %>
<td><%= link_to "Add Employee", new_employee_path %></td>
<% end %>
You can use helper and content_tag to generate html instead of ugly erb grammar.
def foo
if group.employees.count > 0
content_tag(...)
else
content_tag(...)
end
end
then in your view
<%= foo %>
Tumtu's way is the best, but I would even put the td tags outside the if statements. I would never use unless with else, and certainly is not a "rails way" to use unless.
