This is part of the Semicolon&Sons Code Diary - consisting of lessons learned on the job. You're in the rails category.
Last Updated: 2024-11-02
My frontend was as follows:
<%= f.select :law_level, @tutor_search_form.possible_law_levels,
{include_blank: "Any"} %>
In my backend, I had the following
institution = params[:institution]
tutors = tutors.where(institution: institution) if institution
This gave me bugs. Why? Because institution was ""
, i.e. empty string, which is truthy.
The fix:
tutors = tutors.where(institution: institution) if institution.present?
present?
whenever dealing with HTML user input. (Or more generally, use
methods that treat empty strings as almost falsey when dealing with input)nil
, if possible