This article was originally published onRails Designer

Rails is packed with nifty, small helpers that help you not reinvent the wheel. Every once in a while you remember one that you are sure some of you are not known with.

Today and I want to quickly go over:link_to_if andlink_to_unless.

They both act the same as the, probably, knownlink_to helper, but, as you guessed, allow a conditional.

Basics

The syntax forlink_to_if looks like this:

link_to_if(condition,name,options={},html_options={},&block)

Or with actual values:

<%=link_to_if(Current.user.present?,"Profile",profile_path)%>

This will, ifCurrent.user.present? returns true, render a typicallink_to, but if it returnsfalse it will return just the textProfile.

link_to_unless accepts the same attributes, but does the opposite. Take this example:

<%=link_to_unless(current_page?(home_path),"Home",home_path)%>

This will render a typicallink_to unlesscurrent_page?(home_path) returns true. You can imagine this is useful innavigations.

Tweak the conditional render

You can also tweak what (if anything) is rendered when the conditional is (not) met. Like so:

<%=link_to_if(Current.user.has_role?(:admin),"Manage Users",admin_users_path)do%><div><p>You need to be an admin to manage users.</p><p>If you believe this is an error, please contact support.</p></div><%end%>

I have used this to show links to features a certain account/user didn't have access to, but then show a modal for an upsell. Works great.

<%=link_to_if(Feature.enabled?(:ai_access),"Add AI Magic",setting_ai_path)do%><%=link_to"Add AI Magic",upsell_path(highlight:"ai"),data:{turbo_frame:"modal"}%><%end%>

And that's it. Yet another small, but useful little helper in Rails.