Ruby Quicktips

Directly access an object if it’s present

If you want to access an object only if it’s present, you can use Rails’ Object#presence.
The API docs on presence have a good explanation:

This is handy for any representation of objects where blank is the same as not present at all. For example, this simplifies a common check for HTTP POST/query parameters:

state   = params[:state]   if params[:state].present?
country = params[:country] if params[:country].present?
region  = state || country || 'US'

…becomes:

region = params[:state].presence || params[:country].presence || 'US'