Question

I’m facing I guess a basic issue, but I can’t find a better way to
deal with it.

I have an Array:

a = [ { "address_number" => 123, 
        "suite"=> 342, 
        "crazy_hash" => true, 
        "crazy_hash" => [{"why_hash_in_array" => true}] 
      }, 
      "I'm a string", 
      123, 
      { "empty" => ""} 
    ] 

I want to access the Hash with the key “why_hash_in_array”, and am
doing this:

b = a.first["crazy_hash"].first["why_hash_in_array"] 

I understand that this is not a good way to access the data because if
the array changes the order, the retrieval of that key will not work
anymore.

Is there a method from Ruby or Rails that can “magically” retrieve
that keypair? Something like:

a.magic_hash_wand["why_hash_in_array"] 
=> true 

Answer 1

Here’s a magic chain that will help you 🙂

puts a.map{|b| b["crazy_hash"] rescue nil}.compact.flatten.first['why_hash_in_array']
# => true

It’s immune to array reordering and will return first crazy_hash it sees. If that crazy_hash is not a hash, it will raise an error.