I encounter a strange problem when trying to alter values from a Hash. I have the following setup:
myHash = {
company_name:"MyCompany",
street:"Mainstreet",
postcode:"1234",
city:"MyCity",
free_seats:"3"
}
def cleanup string
string.titleize
end
def format
output = Hash.new
myHash.each do |item|
item[:company_name] = cleanup(item[:company_name])
item[:street] = cleanup(item[:street])
output << item
end
end
When I execute this code I get: "TypeError: no implicit conversion of Symbol into Integer" although the output of item[:company_name] is the expected string. What am I doing wrong?
5 Answers
Your item variable holds Array instance (in [hash_key, hash_value] format), so it doesn't expect Symbol in [] method.
This is how you could do it using Hash#each:
def format(hash)
output = Hash.new
hash.each do |key, value|
output[key] = cleanup(value)
end
output
end
or, without this:
def format(hash)
output = hash.dup
output[:company_name] = cleanup(output[:company_name])
output[:street] = cleanup(output[:street])
output
end
This error shows up when you are treating an array or string as a Hash. In this line myHash.each do |item| you are assigning item to a two-element array [key, value], so item[:symbol] throws an error.
You probably meant this:
require 'active_support/core_ext' # for titleize
myHash = {company_name:"MyCompany", street:"Mainstreet", postcode:"1234", city:"MyCity", free_seats:"3"}
def cleanup string
string.titleize
end
def format(hash)
output = {}
output[:company_name] = cleanup(hash[:company_name])
output[:street] = cleanup(hash[:street])
output
end
format(myHash) # => {:company_name=>"My Company", :street=>"Mainstreet"}
Please read documentation on Hash#each
myHash.each{|item|..} is returning you array object for item iterative variable like the following :--
[:company_name, "MyCompany"]
[:street, "Mainstreet"]
[:postcode, "1234"]
[:city, "MyCity"]
[:free_seats, "3"]
You should do this:--
def format
output = Hash.new
myHash.each do |k, v|
output[k] = cleanup(v)
end
output
end
Ive come across this many times in my work, an easy work around that I found is to ask if the array element is a Hash by class.
if i.class == Hash
notation like i[:label] will work in this block and not throw that error
end
