This article will cover the basics of working with ruby hashes.

---

Published on:October 13, 2013

---

This article will cover the basics of working with hashes in Ruby. Hashes are also known as "dictionaries" or "associative arrays" in the programming world. They provide a useful means of storing data.

All examples in this article can be run using the irb console command. This will get you to a Ruby prompt. If you want to exit the Ruby prompt at any time, merely type exit.

Creating a New Hash

There are many different ways of creating a new hash. All yield the same result. The easiest way is listed below.

{:ruby => "hashes"}

However, you can also create the hash using the methods listed below.

Hash.[]("ruby", "hashes", "are", "awesome!")
Hash.[]("ruby" => "hashes", "are" => "awesome!")
Hash["ruby", "hashes", "are", "awesome!"]
Hash["ruby" => "hashes", "are" => "awesome!"]
{"ruby", "hashes", "are", "awesome!"}

Finally, you can use the new Ruby syntax of placing the colon (:) to the right instead of the left.

{hashes: "awesome", ruby: "awesome"}

It's easy to get data back from a hash. Simply use the code listed below.

 h = {hashes: "awesome", ruby: "awesome"}
 h[:hashes] # returns "awesome"

You can also use fetch.

h.fetch(:hashes) # returns awesome

Adding New Data to a Hash

Adding new data to a hash is simple.

h[:rails] = "rocks" # h is now {:hashes => "awesome", :ruby => "awesome", :rails => "rocks"}

You can also use this code to update an existing key/value pair.

Deleting Data From a Hash

You can easily delete data from a hash using the delete method.

h = {hashes: "awesome", ruby: "awesome", rails: "awesome"}
h.delete(:rails) # h is now {:hashes => "awesome", :ruby => "awesome"}

You can delete all key/value pairs using the clear method.

h.clear # h is now {}

You can also use reject and reject! to set conditions on key/value removal, reject creates a copy of the hash and reject! returns nil if nothing was removed.

h = {hashes: "awesome", ruby: "awesome", rails: "awesome"}
h.reject {|key, value| key == :rails} # returns a new hash containing {:hashes => "awesome", :ruby => "awesome"}, h is untouched.
h.reject! {|key, value| key == :rails} # h is now {:hashes => "awesome", :ruby => "awesome"}

Iterating Through a Hash

You can easily iterate through the items in a hash.

h = {hashes: "awesome", ruby: "awesome", rails: "awesome"}
h.each do |key, val|
	puts "#{key} => #{val}" # prints each key and value.
end

In addition, if you only need the keys you can use the following code.

h.each_key do |key|
	puts "#{key}" # prints each key.
end

Also, the values:

h.each_value do |val|
	puts "#{value}" # prints each value.
end

Detecting Keys and Values in a Hash

You can detect whether a key exists using any of the following methods.

h = {hashes: "awesome", ruby: "awesome", rails: "awesome"}
h.has_key?(:hashes) # true
h.include?(:hashes) # true
h.key?(:hashes) # true
h.member?(:hashes) # true

You can easily determine whether a hash has data in it or not using empty?.

h.empty? # false

In addition, you can see how many key/value pairs are in the hash using length:

h.length # 3

You can use detect and it's alias find to find values in a hash. These methods return the first resulting match:

	h.detect {|key, val| val == "awesome"} # returns [:hashes, "awesome"]
	h.find {|key, val| val == "awesome"} # returns [:hashes, "awesome"]

You can also return all matches using select or find_all:

h.select { |key, val| val == "awesome" } # returns {:hashes => "awesome", :ruby => "awesome", :rails => "awesome"}
h.find_all [[:hashes, "awesome"], [:ruby, "awesome"], [:rails, "awesome"]]

Sorting a Hash

You can do basic sorting on a hash:

h2 = {"b" => "3", "a" => "1", "c" => "5"}
h2.sort # returns [["a", "1"], ["b", "3"], ["c", "5"]]

Or you can sort in reverse:

h2.sort {|k1, k2| k2 <=> k1}

Merging Two hashes

You can easily merge multiple hashes using the update method.

h1 = {"a" => 1, "b" => 2}
h2 = {"c" => 3, "d" => 4}
h1.update(h2) # h1 is now {"a" => 1, "b" => 2, "c" => 3, "d" => 4}

Duplicate a Hash

You can easily duplicate a hash using the dup method.

h1 = {hashes: "awesome", ruby: "awesome", rails: "awesome"}
h2 = Marshal.load( Marshal.dump(h1))
h2.clear # h1 is still {:hashes => "awesome", :ruby > "awesome", :rails > "awesome"}

That's it! Thanks for reading!