Ruby/Rails - interate over complex (nested) JSON elements to create objects

Question

I'm parsing some JSON from a mixed content source, and with it trying to store it with ActiveRecord.

At the moment I'm using a ton of variables:

json['settings']['newsletters']['weekly']
json['info']['address']['city']

Or trying to make things a little easier:

newsletters = json['settings']['newsletters']
newsletters['weekly']
address = json['info']['address']
address['city']

But this is all getting very messy, and not DRY.

I think the better way to do this would be to iterate over each element that is a hash (and therefore 'complex'), and assign it it's own object. This way, I don't have to declare a trillion variables, they can instead be assigned from the context of the JSON input.

So, I can do something like this:

user = json['input']
user.settings.newsletters.weekly
user.info.address.city

This is inspired by what ActiveResource documents:

# Any complex element (one that contains other elements) becomes its own object:
#
# {"id":1,"first":"Tyler","address":{"street":"Paper St.","state":"CA"}}
tyler = Person.find(1)
tyler.address  # => <Person::Address::xxxxx>
tyler.address.street  # => 'Paper St.'

Here is the JSON, reduced for brevity's sake:

{
    "username": "robert_fitzsimmonds",
    "emails": [{
        "id_number": 1,
        "address": "[email protected]",
        "confirmed": false
    }, {
        "id_number": 2,
        "address": "[email protected]",
        "confirmed": true
    }],
    "settings": {
        "marketing": {
            "main": true,
            "weekly": false,
            "daily": false
        },
        "language": "English"
    },
    "info": {
        "address": {
            "line_1": "31 Mole Road",
            "line_2": "",
            "city": "London",
            "post_code": "NE4 5RJ"
        },
        "shared_account": false
    }
}

Would such an iteration be the most efficient solution, or is it best to stick to long, messy variables?

Sana · Accepted Answer · 2015-12-24 01:21:16Z

1

Use the hash_dot gem if you can https://github.com/adsteel/hash_dot

edited Dec 24, 2015 at 1:21

answered Dec 24, 2015 at 1:16

Sana

9,93516 gold badges61 silver badges87 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

1 Comment

Kier Over a year ago

This is precisely what I was looking for! Two days of searching RDocs and GitHub, and somehow I didn't stumble upon this Gem. Thanks so much Sana.

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Ruby/Rails - interate over complex (nested) JSON elements to create objects

1 Answer 1

1 Comment

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

1 Comment

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related