What’s an elegant way to conditionally add a class to an HTML element in a view?

I use the first way, but with a slightly more succinct syntax:

<div class="<%= 'ok' if @status == 'success' %>">

Though usually you should represent success with boolean true or a numeric record ID, and failure with boolean false or nil. This way you can just test your variable:

<div class="<%= 'ok' if @success %>">

A second form using the ternary ?: operator is useful if you want to choose between two classes:

<div class="<%= @success ? 'good' : 'bad' %>">

Finally, you can use Rail’s record tag helpers such as div_for, which will automagically set your ID and class based on the record you give it. Given a Person with id 47:

# <div id="person_47" class="person good">
<% div_for @person, class: (@success ? 'good' : 'bad') do %>
<% end %>