Open a file, with a fallback path if it doesn't exist at one location

Question

I am parsing a file that exists in either app/components/ui or in app/components. If the one in the first dir (app/components/ui) doesn't exist, then fallback to the app/components directory. This is what I have currently.

  def front_matter
    return unless params[:filename].present?

    path = Rails.root.join('app', 'components', 'ui', params[:filename])
    path = Rails.root.join('app', 'components', params[:filename]) unless File.exist?(path)
    @front_matter ||= FrontMatterParser::Parser.parse_file(path)
  end

Is there a better way to write this?

Answer 1

It seems OK to me. You might put the file logic into another method, perhaps, so that #front_matter is only doing one thing?

def front_matter_path
  path = Rails.root.join('app', 'components', 'ui', params[:filename])
  return path if File.exist?(path)
  Rails.root.join('app', 'components', params[:filename])
end

def front_matter
  return unless params[:filename].present?
  @front_matter ||= FrontMatterParser::Parser.parse_file(front_matter_path)
end