Question

I have a variable. When I do puts var_name I get this hash:

"{\"numConnections\": 163}"

But when I try to get that number 163 from the value numConnections it isn’t working. Here is what I am trying:

connections = temp_var["\"numConnections\""]
puts connections.inspect

or:

connections = temp_var["numConnections"]
puts connections.inspect

both of which equally don’t work.

Any idea how to extract that 163 from there?

Answer 1

If you have a JSON string, you need to parse it into a hash before you can use it to access its keys and values in a hash-like way. Consider this IRB session:

1.9.3p194 :001 > require 'json'
 => true
1.9.3p194 :002 > temp_var = "{\"numConnections\": 163}"
 => "{"numConnections": 163}"
1.9.3p194 :003 > temp_var.class
 => String 
1.9.3p194 :004 > JSON.parse(temp_var)
 => {"numConnections"=>163}
1.9.3p194 :005 > JSON.parse(temp_var)['numConnections']
 => 163