CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby-on-railsruby
brad
brad

Reputation: 9773

What's the most concise way to format a full name in Ruby?

I want to generate full names from title, first_name, middle_name, and last_name. e.g. Mr Billy Bob Thornton. But the title and middle_name are optional and I don't want to get any leading or double spaces. I've come up with lots of ways of doing them but none of them seem really elegant. Here are my techniques so far

full_name = "#{title} #{first_name} #{middle_name} #{last_name}"
#FAIL. Leading and double spaces result

full_name = "#{title} #{first_name} #{middle_name} #{last_name}".gsub(/^ /,'').gsub(/  /,' ')
#Works but all that regex tacked on the end is very ugly

full_name = "#{title}#{title.nil? || title.empty? ? '' : ' '}#{first_name} #{middle_name}#{middle_name.nil? || middle_name.empty? ? '' : ' '}#{last_name}"
#Works but goes on forever

I'll be using rails so can reduce my .nil? || .empty? to .blank? to make the last one a little more concise but I can't help but think that there's a nicer way.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 325

Answers (4)

mu is too short
mu is too short

Reputation: 434795

You're using Rails so you have access to String#squish:

squish()

Returns the string, first removing all whitespace on both ends of the string, and then changing remaining consecutive whitespace groups into one space each.

So you could do this:

name = "#{title} #{first_name} #{middle_name} #{last_name}".squish

Upvotes: 9

Ray Toal
Ray Toal

Reputation: 88428

Check out Ruby's String#squeeze and String#strip

>> title=""
=> ""
>> first_name="Alice"
=> "Alice"
>> middle_name=""
=> ""
>> last_name=""
=> ""
>> full_name = "#{title} #{first_name} #{middle_name} #{last_name}".squeeze(" ").strip
=> "Alice"
>> last_name="Wu"
=> "Wu"
>> full_name = "#{title} #{first_name} #{middle_name} #{last_name}".squeeze(" ").strip
=> "Alice Wu"

Generalizing to a function should be pretty easy.

Upvotes: 2

xdazz
xdazz

Reputation: 160893

[title, first_name, middle_name, last_name].select({|v| v.present?}).join(' ')

Upvotes: 0

Benoît
Benoît

Reputation: 15010

Would you be looking for something like this ?

[title, first_name, middle_name, last_name].compact.reject(&:empty?).join(' ')

with Rails

[title, first_name, middle_name, last_name].select(&:present?).join(' ')

Upvotes: 2

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