From: Justin Collins <justincollins@...>
Date: 2008-01-19T04:03:08+09:00
Subject: Re: How to manipulate a Hash object to String

Erwin wrote:
> I got a result from my app (web service) that I transform into a
> Hash :
>
> @return = Hash.from_xml(data).values.first
>
>
> @return = {"Saved"=>"false", "Rating"=>{"Comment"=>nil, "Error"=>"
> missing"}, "Post"=>{"Title"=>nil, "Error"=>"missing"},
> "Post"=>{"Description"=>nil, "Error"=>"missing"},
> "XXX"=>{"YYYYY"=>nil, "ZZZZ"=>"zzzzzz"}}
>
> I would like to convert this result into a string , getting only  the
> YYYYY: zzzzzz
>
> like this one
> "Comment: missing, Title: missing, Description: missing, YYYYY:
> zzzzzz"
>
> I am not very easy with Hash transformation, so a little bit help will
> be appreciated
>
> thanks
>
> Erwin
>   

It seems like you have some fairly specific data you need to put into 
the string, so I don't think you can do this in a very generic way.

However, if you know what keys you need, then taking values from a hash 
and creating a string is pretty straightforward. I'm assuming here that 
you only want to display the "Error" when the other value doesn't exist:

return_string = "Comment: #{@return["Rating"]["Comment"] || 
@return["Rating"]["Error"]}, Title: #{@return["Post"]["Title"] || 
@return["Post"]["Error"]}"   #...etc

But I noticed that you have two "Post" keys in your hash - one will 
overwrite the other. You might want to see what you are really getting 
back from the web service.

-Justin