How to show if there are children in a list?

I have the following parent - child models.

class Parent has_many :children end

class Child belongs_to :parent, :foreign_key => “parent_id” end

Now, in my list of parents, the user can click a link to see the children for a parent. What I’d want to do is to show whether a parent has any children on the parent list page, without the user having to click on the link to find out.

My current query to populate the table is as follows:

@parents = Parent.find(:all, :order => “name”)

Can this query be modified to get the number of children as well? Or, return true if the parent has at least one child?

In the controller: @parents = Parent.find(:all, :order => “name”, :include => :children)

In the view (while iterating through @parents):

<%= ‘Has children’ if parent.children.any? %>

or

<%= “Has #{pluralize(parent.children.count, ‘child’, ‘children’)}” %>