Ruby on Rails Tutorial: Defining a hash with symbol keys

Question

Regarding the exercises in Michael Hartl's RoR Tutorial in lesson 4.3.3 (Hashes & Symbols):

"Define a hash with symbol keys corresponding to name, email, and a “password digest”, and values equal to your name, your email address, and a random string of 16 lower-case letters."

I am hoping to get some input and/or alternative & 'better' solutions to this (or at least some criticism regarding my solution).

def my_hash
  a = ('a'..'z').to_a.shuffle[0..15].join
  b = { name: "John", email: "[email protected]", password: a }
  return b
end

puts my_hash

(Yes I realize this is a very simple exercise and apologize if it has been asked before.)

Aleksei Matiushkin · Accepted Answer · 2017-07-11 13:20:09Z

3

There are many 2 improvements could be made:

Use Array#sample to get random letters (it has an advantage: the letter might in fact repeat in the password, while shuffle[0..15] will return 16 distinct letters);
Avoid redundant local variables and especially return.

Here you go:

def my_hash
  {
    name: "John",
    email: "[email protected]",
    password: ('a'..'z').to_a.sample(16).join
  }
end

puts my_hash

Bonus:

I accidentaly found the third glitch in the original code. It should probably be:

def my_hash
  {
    name: "Brandon",
    email: "[email protected]",
    password: ('a'..'z').to_a.sample(16).join
  }
end

:)

edited Jul 11, 2017 at 13:20

answered Jul 11, 2017 at 13:14

Aleksei Matiushkin

121k12 gold badges109 silver badges174 bronze badges

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

6 Comments

Belder Over a year ago

That's cool. I havn't come across the Enumerable#sample yet but I can see the advantage there. Thanks! Also, wondering if it is just a matter of taste or best practice not to have all of the key/value pairs on a single line?

Aleksei Matiushkin Over a year ago

Regarding single line: here it’s mostly a matter of respecting those reading from smartphones and having not-so-wide screens. AFAIR, rubocop has a default rule to have lines not wider than 80 characters. But it’s definitely up to code owner/team to set up such rules.

Belder Over a year ago

ok..that's good to know. I have used rubocop but wasn't aware of that rule. Very helpful. lol... And you're right about that glitch.

David Aldridge Over a year ago

There are also arguments that it makes changes easier to track, for example using a diff on a git change. It isolates the logical components so you see exactly what has changed more easily (e.g. if the code for the password changed).

Aleksei Matiushkin Over a year ago

@DavidAldridge well, all modern git diff pagers do support highlighting changes inside lines, but yes, I agree, tracking changes matters here.

|

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Ruby on Rails Tutorial: Defining a hash with symbol keys

1 Answer 1

6 Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

6 Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related