Ruby convert Object to Hash

Question

Let\'s say I have a Gift object with @name = \"book\" & @price = 15.95. What\'s the best way to convert that to the Hash {na

Answer 1

You should override the inspect method of your object to return the desired hash, or just implement a similar method without overriding the default object behaviour.

If you want to get fancier, you can iterate over an object's instance variables with object.instance_variables

Answer 2

If you need nested objects to be converted as well.

# @fn       to_hash obj {{{
# @brief    Convert object to hash
#
# @return   [Hash] Hash representing converted object
#
def to_hash obj
  Hash[obj.instance_variables.map { |key|
    variable = obj.instance_variable_get key
    [key.to_s[1..-1].to_sym,
      if variable.respond_to? <:some_method> then
        hashify variable
      else
        variable
      end
    ]
  }]
end # }}}

Answer 3

You can use as_json method. It'll convert your object into hash.

But, that hash will come as a value to the name of that object as a key. In your case,

{'gift' => {'name' => 'book', 'price' => 15.95 }}

If you need a hash that's stored in the object use as_json(root: false). I think by default root will be false. For more info refer official ruby guide

http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveModel/Serializers/JSON.html#method-i-as_json

Answer 4

Just say (current object) .attributes

.attributes returns a hash of any object. And it's much cleaner too.

Answer 5

To do this without Rails, a clean way is to store attributes on a constant.

class Gift
  ATTRIBUTES = [:name, :price]
  attr_accessor(*ATTRIBUTES)
end

And then, to convert an instance of Gift to a Hash, you can:

class Gift
  ...
  def to_h
    ATTRIBUTES.each_with_object({}) do |attribute_name, memo|
      memo[attribute_name] = send(attribute_name)
    end
  end
end

This is a good way to do this because it will only include what you define on attr_accessor, and not every instance variable.

class Gift
  ATTRIBUTES = [:name, :price]
  attr_accessor(*ATTRIBUTES)

  def create_random_instance_variable
    @xyz = 123
  end

  def to_h
    ATTRIBUTES.each_with_object({}) do |attribute_name, memo|
      memo[attribute_name] = send(attribute_name)
    end
  end
end

g = Gift.new
g.name = "Foo"
g.price = 5.25
g.to_h
#=> {:name=>"Foo", :price=>5.25}

g.create_random_instance_variable
g.to_h
#=> {:name=>"Foo", :price=>5.25}

Answer 6

Recursively convert your objects to hash using 'hashable' gem (https://rubygems.org/gems/hashable) Example

class A
  include Hashable
  attr_accessor :blist
  def initialize
    @blist = [ B.new(1), { 'b' => B.new(2) } ]
  end
end

class B
  include Hashable
  attr_accessor :id
  def initialize(id); @id = id; end
end

a = A.new
a.to_dh # or a.to_deep_hash
# {:blist=>[{:id=>1}, {"b"=>{:id=>2}}]}