In Ruby I defined these on Object. A little ugly if you are doing a long chain, but works fine in many cases.

  def if_present?
    # example: User.find_all_by_something.if_present? || User.find_all_by_something_else
    self  if present?
  end

  def send_if_respond_to(method, *args)
    # example: string_or_nil.send_if_respond_to(:strip)
    send(method, *args)  if respond_to?(method)
  end