From: Jano Svitok <jan.svitok@...>
Date: 2008-05-02T18:27:11+09:00
Subject: Re: Extracting a value from an array

On Fri, May 2, 2008 at 11:02 AM, Albert Schlef <albertschlef@gmail.com> wrote:
> I have the following array:
>
>  headers = [
>   { :name => 'user-agent', :value => 'blah blah' },
>   { :name =>'content-type', :value => 'text/html' },
>   { :name => 'pragma', :value => 'no-cache' },
>   { :name =>'content-length', :value => '30' },
>   { :name =>'content-type', :value => 'text/html' },
>  ]
>
>  Now, I want to extract the :value of the first header of a specific
>  :name. For example, I want to extract the :value of the 'content-type'
>  header.
>
>  So I do:
>
>  content_length = nil
>  headers.each { |header|
>   content_length = header[:value] if header[:name] == 'content-length'
>  }
>
>  However, this code is not very "beautiful", and I was wondering if
>  there's some other, more clearer way to do this.
>
>  (And it's fine with me if we take the :value of a 'content-type' header
>  which is not necessarily the first in the array (in the code above I
>  actually pick the last header). Also, I don't very much mind about
>  performance because there are a few headers. I'm simply looking for a
>  clear, straightforward code for this simple task.)

headers.select {|header| header[:name] == 'content-length'}.first[:value]

or even better:

headers.find {|header| header[:name] == 'content-length'}[:value]