Question

Say I have

str = "a=2&b=3.05&c=testing"

I run

require 'cgi'
out = {}
CGI::parse(str).each { |k,v| out[k] = v[0] }

When I output a, 2 is a string, when I want it to be an Int

out['a'] // "2" (instead of int 2)
out['b'] // "3.05" (instead of float 3.05)

Is there any way to correct the types from the query string?

Update:

Added this method to test for numbers

def is_a_number?(s)
  s.to_s.match(/\A[+-]?\d+?(\.\d+)?\Z/) == nil ? false : true 
end

and during the parse

CGI::parse(url).each do |k,v|
    val = v[0]
    if is_a_number? val 
        val = val.include?('.') ? val.to_f : val.to_i
    end 
    out[k] = val 
end 

Seems to work with basic examples. Is there anything unsafe about this?

Answer 1

Edited: This works

require 'cgi'

str = "a=2&b=3.05&c=testing"
out = {}

def typecasted(str)
  [str.to_i, str.to_f, str].find { |cast| cast.to_s == str }
end

CGI::parse(str).each do |key, val|
  out[key] = typecasted val.first
end

p out
# => {"a"=>2, "b"=>3.05, "c"=>"testing"}