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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-17T21:08:05+00:00

I have an array of hashes in the format albums = [ {name: Sgt.

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I have an array of hashes in the format 

albums = [ {name: "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", year: "1967" }, 
           { name: "Are You Experienced?", year: "1967" } 
         ]

etc..

I am trying to insert this output into a string that then needs to be inserted into html. I currently have this

def convert_to_html albums
  string_before = 
    "<html>
      <head>
        <title>\"Rolling Stone's ....\"</title>
      </head>
      <body>
        <table>\n" + 
        albums.each do |x| 
          "name is: #{x.values[0]} year is: #{x.values[1]}"
        end  + "
        </table>
      </body>
    </html>"
end

I know that this probably isn’t the best way to get the values but I can’t figure out any other way, but my major problem is that when I try this I get this error:

[2013-01-27 00:16:20] ERROR TypeError: can't convert Array into String
    albums.rb:72:in `+'
    albums.rb:72:in `convert_to_html'
    albums.rb:28:in `block in render_list'
    albums.rb:26:in `open'
    albums.rb:26:in `render_list'
    albums.rb:9:in `call'

Is there any way to insert the values from each hash side by side into the string?

P.S. I used name and year for readability. I know #{x.values[0]} #{x.values[1]} is the correct way to format this.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    This is simple code showing how to do it:

    album_list = [
  {name: "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", year: "1967" }, 
  { name: "Are You Experienced?", year: "1967" } 
]

def convert_to_html(albums)

"<html>
  <head>
    <title>\"Rolling Stone's ....\"</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <table>
" + albums.map { |album| 
"     <tr><td>name is: #{ album[:name] } year is: #{ album[:year] }</td></tr>"
}.join("\n") +
"
    </table>
  </body>
</html>"

end

puts convert_to_html(album_list)

    Which outputs:

    <html>
  <head>
    <title>"Rolling Stone's ...."</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <table>
    <tr><td>name is: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band year is: 1967</td></tr>
    <tr><td>name is: Are You Experienced? year is: 1967</td></tr>
    </table>
  </body>
</html>

    In real life I’d use ERB or HAML to generate the HTML. They’re great templating tools.

    Other ways of writing:

    <tr><td>name is: #{ album[:name] } year is: #{ album[:year] }</td></tr>"

    Are:

    <tr><td>name is: %s year is: %s </td></tr>" % [ album[:name], album[:year] ]

    or:

    <tr><td>name is: %s year is: %s </td></tr>" % album.values_at(:name, :year)

    I don’t recommend using album.values by itself because it relies on the order of insertion into the album hash. In the future, if you modify the hash by putting something into it in a different order while maintaining the code, the values order will change, breaking it in a way that might not be obvious.

    Instead, use one of these ways of accessing the values to always explicitely get the value associated with the key. That’s part of programming defensively.

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