Question

What is the best way to turn the following Ruby String into an Array (I’m using ruby 1.9.2/Rails 3.0.11)

Rails console:

>Item.first.ingredients
=> "[\"Bread, whole wheat, 100%, slice\", \"Egg Substitute\", \"new, Eggs, scrambled\"]"
>Item.first.ingredients.class.name
=> "String"
>Item.first.ingredients.length
77

The desired output:

>Item.first.ingredients_a
["Bread, whole wheat, 100%, slice", "Egg Substitute", "new, Eggs, scrambled"]
>Item.first.ingredients_a.class.name
=> "Array
>Item.first.ingredients_a.length
=> 3

If I do this, for instance:

>Array(Choice.first.ingredients)

I get this:

=> ["[\"Bread, whole wheat, 100%, slice\", \"Egg Substitute\", \"new, Eggs, scrambled\", \"Oats, rolled, old fashioned\", \"Syrup, pancake\", \"Water, tap\", \"Oil, olive blend\", \"Spice, cinnamon, ground\", \"Seeds, sunflower, kernels, dried\", \"Flavor, vanilla extract\", \"Honey, strained/extracted\", \"Raisins, seedless\", \"Cranberries, dried, swtnd\", \"Spice, ginger, ground\", \"Flour, whole wheat\"]"] 

I’m sure there must be some obvious way to solve this.

For clarity, this will be editable in a textarea field in a form, so should be made as secure as possible.

Answer 1

class Item
  def ingredients_a
    ingredients.gsub(/(\[\"|\"\])/, '').split('", "')
  end
end

1. strip off the extraneous characters
2. split into array elements using the separating pattern