Question

Normally I have:

cookies[:location] = { :value => { :city => 'foo', :country => 'bar' } } 

However, sometimes :country is not set. When I do:

cookies[:location][:country].present? 

to check if country has been set, it returns an error:

[:country] is not a symbol

How would I check to see if a country is set in cookie[:location] if I cannot do it this way?

Answer 1

You cookies hash is nested differently than you are expecting: :value is nested under :location, :city and :country are nested under :value. Here is some irb output to get you started:

[~]$ irb
>> cookies={}
=> {}
>> cookies[:location] = { :value => { :city => 'foo', :country => 'bar' } }
=> {:value=>{:city=>"foo", :country=>"bar"}}
>> cookies[:location][:value][:country]
=> "bar"
>> cookies.to_s
=> "{:location=>{:value=>{:city=>\"foo\", :country=>\"bar\"}}}"

If you nest the hash like below, you will get your expected behavior:

>> cookies[:location] = { :city => 'foo', :country => 'bar' } 
=> {:city=>"foo", :country=>"bar"}
>> cookies[:location][:country]
=> "bar"