Rails - Jul 2006 - NULLs and model relationships

What is the accepted idiom for displaying database rows that contain 
NULLs in their foreign key reference to another table?  Very simplified 
example:

SQL:
CREATE TABLE topics (id integer, name varchar);
CREATE TABLE posts (id integer, topic_id integer, post text);

Rails Models:
class Topic < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :post
end
class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :topic
end

Rails View:
<% for post in @posts %>
  <%= h post.post %>
  <%= h post.topic.name %> <-------- idiom in question
<% end %>

Of course, if the topic_id column in the post is null, then we end up 
with a nil object that doesn''t understand ''name''.  I
could put
<%= post.topic ? h post.topic.name : ''Unknown'' %>
at every place in the view, but this seems a little inelegant.  Is there 
a better idiom for this, perhaps to tell the model about the default 
display values?

thanks
-Worky

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