Ruby Search Array of Hashes and Arrays

Question

I have an array of hashes which also include an array:

machines = [{ 'name' => 'ldapserver1', 'ip' => '10.199.0.10',
         'role' => ['server', 'initial'] },
       { 'name' => 'ldapserver2', 'ip' => '10.199.0.11',
         'role' => ['server', 'secondary'] },
       { 'name' => 'ldapclient1', 'ip' => '10.199.0.12',
         'role' => 'client' },
       { 'name' => 'ldapclient2', 'ip' => '10.199.0.13',
         'role' => 'client' }]

I want to search thru it to get the machine with a matching role.

I can use this to get machines with the client role:

results = @machines.select { |machine| machine['role'] == 'client' }

[{"name"=>"ldapclient1", "ip"=>"10.199.0.12", "role"=>"client"}, {"name"=>"ldapclient2", "ip"=>"10.199.0.13", "role"=>"client"}]

But when I try to search the array of roles this breaks:

results = machines.select { |machine| machine['role'] == 'server' }

[]

How can I search through the role arrays to find matches for my machines?

Answer 1

This is a perfect use-case for Enumerable#grep :

machines.reject { |m| [*m['role']].grep('server').empty? }

Here a splat is used to produce an array from both Array instance and the String instance.

Answer 2

As per your code the roles can be string or array so safe to check using following

results = machines.select { |machine| Array(machine['role']).include?('server') }

Update: using Array, this method tries to create array by calling to_ary, then to_a on its argument.

Answer 3

That is because 'role' can be a string or an array.

Using #include? will match part of a string if it's a string. Or fully match a string inside an array.

Try:

results = machines.select { |machine| machine['role'].include?('server') }

Or more robust

results = machines.select do |machine| 
  r = machine['role']
  if r.is_a? String
    r == 'server'
  else
    r.include?('server') 
  end
end