Ruby method to find a string within an array of strings

Question

I've got an array of strings that looks like this:

[noindex,nofollow]

or ["index", "follow", "all"]

I'm calling these "tags_array." I've got a method that looks like this:

return true if self.tags_array.to_s.include? "index" and !self.tags_array.to_s.include? "noindex"

But I think there's a smarter way to run this code than to take the entire array and convert it to an string.

The problem is, sometimes the info comes in as a single element array and other times it comes in as an array of strings.

Any suggestions on the smartest way to do this?

Answer 1

You wouldn't have to convert your Array into a String since Array contains an include? method.

tags_array.include?("index") #=> returns true or false

However, like you said, sometimes the info comes in as an Array of a single String. If the single String element of that Array contains words that are always separated by a space then you could turn the String into an Array with the split method.

tags_array[0].split.include?("index") if tags_array.size == 1 

Or if the words are always separated with commas:

tags_array[0].split(",").include?("index") if tags_array.size == 1 

EDIT:

Or if you have no idea what they will be separated by but you know the words will only ever contain letters:

tags_array[0].split(/[^a-zA-Z]/).include?("index") if tags_array.size == 1