Ruby: select a hash from inside an array

Question

I have the following array:

response = [{"label"=>"cat", "name"=>"kitty", "id"=>189955}, {"label" => "dog", "name"=>"rex", "id" => 550081}]

How do I select the hash that contains the label cat? I know response.first will give me the same result, but I want to search the by label.

Thanks!

Deb

Adrian · Accepted Answer · 2010-08-05 20:54:50Z

49

response.find {|x| x['label'] == 'cat' } #=> {"label"=>"cat", "name"=>"kitty", "id"=>189955}

answered Aug 5, 2010 at 20:54

Adrian

15.2k9 gold badges51 silver badges73 bronze badges

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

Comments

Daniel O'Hara · Accepted Answer · 2010-08-05 20:54:58Z

15

Try:

response.select { |x| x["label"] == "cat" }

answered Aug 5, 2010 at 20:54

Daniel O'Hara

13.5k3 gold badges48 silver badges70 bronze badges

select works too, but it returns an array, so I'm going with "find" in this particular case. Thanks! :)

Yes, Array#find returns the first match or nil, while Array#select and Array#find_all return an array of all matching elements.

And it's also worth noting that a synonym for Array#find is Array#detect.