Question

I have four arrays that are coming in from the client. Let’s say that there is an array of names, birth dates, favorite color and location. The idea is I want a hash later where each name will have a hash with respective attributes:

Example date coming from the client:

[name0, name1, name2, name3]
[loc0, loc1]
[favcololor0, favcolor1]
[bd0, bd1, bd2, bd3, bd4, bd5]

Output I’d like to achieve:

name0 => { location => loc0, favcolor => favcolor0, bd => bd0 }
name1 => { location => loc1, favcolor => favcolor1, bd => bd1 }
name2 => { location => nil, favcolor => nil, bd => bd2 }
name3 => { location => nil, favcolor => nil, bd => bd3 }

I want to have an array at the end of the day where I can iterate and work on each particular person hash.

There need not be an equivalent number of values in each array. Meaning, names are required.. and I might receive 5 of them, but I only might receive 3 birth dates, 2 favorite colors and 1 location. Every missing value will result in a nil.

How does one make that kind of data structure with Ruby 1.9?

Answer 1

I would probably do it like this

# assuming names, fav_colors, birth_dates, and locations are your arrays

name_collection = {}

names.zip(birth_dates, fav_colors, locations) do |name, birth_date, fav_color, location|
  name_collection[name] = { :birth_date => birth_date,
                            :fav_color => fav_color,
                            :location => location }
end

# usage
puts name_collection['jack'][:fav_color] # => 'blue'