Question

Let’s say I have the following hash:

{ :foo => 'bar', :baz => 'qux' }

How could I dynamically set the keys and values to become instance variables in an object…

class Example
  def initialize( hash )
    ... magic happens here...
  end
end

… so that I end up with the following inside the model…

@foo = 'bar'
@baz = 'qux'

?

Answer 1

The method you are looking for is instance_variable_set. So:

hash.each { |name, value| instance_variable_set(name, value) }

Or, more briefly,

hash.each &method(:instance_variable_set)

If your instance variable names are missing the “@” (as they are in the OP’s example), you’ll need to add them, so it would be more like:

hash.each { |name, value| instance_variable_set("@#{name}", value) }