Ruby: How to convert a string to boolean

Question

I have a value that will be one of four things: boolean true, boolean false, the string \"true\", or the string \"false\". I want to convert the string to a boolean if it i

Answer 1

In Rails I prefer using ActiveModel::Type::Boolean.new.cast(value) as mentioned in other answers here

But when I write plain Ruby lib. then I use a hack where JSON.parse (standard Ruby library) will convert string "true" to true and "false" to false. E.g.:

require 'json'
azure_cli_response = `az group exists --name derrentest`  # => "true\n"
JSON.parse(azure_cli_response) # => true

azure_cli_response = `az group exists --name derrentesttt`  # => "false\n"
JSON.parse(azure_cli_response) # => false

Example from live application:

require 'json'
if JSON.parse(`az group exists --name derrentest`)
  `az group create --name derrentest --location uksouth`
end

confirmed under Ruby 2.5.1