Question

I have a large hash like this:

{"id"=>"1", 
"contact_id"=>"15062422", 
"status"=>"Complete",
"[question(12), option(24), piped_page(32]" => "Yes", 
"[question(13), option(32)]" => "Robert",
"[question(14)]" => "Thing"}

I need to parse the keys that start with ‘[‘ to separate the name(value) pairs. The number of names (i.e. question, option, etc) in each key is variable but there are a known number of possibilities.

I’d like to convert each pair into a new has like this:

{:question => 12, :option => 24, :piped_page => 32, :value => "Yes"}

I’ve thought of using .to_s on each hash element and then doing a variety of string substitutions followed by eval, but the .to_s escapes the double quotes which really complicates things.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

You can use regex to solve it:

str = "[question(12), option(24), piped_page(32)]"
Hash[str.scan /(\w+)\((\w+)\)/]

=> {"question"=>"12", "option"=>"24", "piped_page"=>"32"}