Ok I am going to shamelessly do a self reply as no one has answered and I have already found the answer :)
Define this as a helper method either in application_helper.rb or anywhere you found convenient.
def content_defined?(symbol)
content_var_name="@content_for_" +
if symbol.kind_of? Symbol
symbol.to_s
elsif symbol.kind_of? String
symbol
else
raise "Parameter symbol must be string or symbol"
end
!instance_variable_get(content_var_name).nil?
end
I'm not sure of the performance implications of calling yield twice, but this will do regardless of the internal implementation of yield (@content_for_xyz is deprecated) and without any extra code or helper methods:
<% if yield :sidebar %>
<div id="sidebar">
<%= yield :sidebar %>
</div>
<% end %>
Recently stumbled upon it when showing all local, global and instance variables of self in the console with byebug. I’m a fan using this because it’s straight from Rails, won’t throw an error, won’t hide anything w “Rails magic”, returns a definite true or false, + only checks the content in the current context of the view being rendered.
@view_flow is an instance attribute of ActionView::Context and because Action View contexts are supplied to Action Controller to render a template it will be available to any view that has been rendered by Rails. Although it checks for content, the content_for block will not be yielded if it isn’t there. So it’s been my perfect solution in similar situations.