Ruby access hash element

Question

I have the following hash:

{"title"=>"ga:browser=Firefox", "dimensions"=>[{:browser=>"Firefox"}], "metrics"=>[{:pageviews=>25474}], "id"=>"http://www.google.com/analytics/feeds/data?ids=ga:3906565&amp;ga:browser=Firefox&amp;start-date=2010-02-06&amp;end-date=2011-02-06", "updated"=>#<DateTime: 212163710400001/86400000,-1/3,2299161>}

How would I print the value of pageviews?

sepp2k · Accepted Answer · 2011-02-06 00:17:08Z

14

Well, you have a hashmap (not an array) which maps the key "metrics" to an array. That array contains a hash as its only element. And that hash maps the key :pageviews to the value 25474. So to get that value you can do:

the_hash["metrics"][0][:pageviews]

This assumes that the hash with the :pageviews key will always be at position 0 in the array, which the key "metrics" is mapped to.

answered Feb 6, 2011 at 0:17

sepp2k

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3 Comments

Tom Over a year ago

Thanks, is there an easy way to tell if it is a hashmap or array? or can you just tell by the structure?

sepp2k Over a year ago

@Tom: A hashmap is surrounded by curly braces and an array by square brackets. Also if a hash is not empty it contains key-value pairs in the form key => value, while an array only contains single values (of course those might themselves be arrays or hashes).

the Tin Man Over a year ago

You can ask Ruby what it is by using variablename.class, where "variablename" is some variable you want to know about. For instance, variable = {}; puts variable.class will output "Hash" or variable = []; puts variable.class will output "Array".

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