CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby
analyticsPierce
analyticsPierce

Reputation: 3025

Convert an array-like string into an array?

I am returning data from an api that is an array of arrays. 

puts response.body 
[["20131001", 7], ["20131002", 15], ["20131003", 5]]

I need to break this up so I can insert it into a database table. However, this is being returned as a string.

results = response.body
puts results.class
String

If I convert it to an array it will have a count of 1.

results_arr =* results
puts results_arr.class
Array
puts results_arr.count
1

What is the best way to convert this into an array so I can access the elements?

UPDATE:

I have no idea why this was marked as off-topic. I'll provide an example of this problem. After I converted response.body into an array with the =* operator (confirmed by results_arr.class) I went to parse the array with this block which got the following results.

  results_arr.each do |date|
    puts date[0]
  end

This returned:

[

I believe that the issue is that converting the String returned in response.body to an Array correctly. I want to know the right way to do it. The answer provided the solution.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 256

Answers (1)

Arup Rakshit
Arup Rakshit

Reputation: 118299

Use YAML libaray of Ruby

require 'yaml'

s = '[["20131001", 7], ["20131002", 15], ["20131003", 5]]'
YAML.load(s) # => [["20131001", 7], ["20131002", 15], ["20131003", 5]]

Or JSON#parse

require 'json'

s = '[["20131001", 7], ["20131002", 15], ["20131003", 5]]'
JSON.parse(s) # => [["20131001", 7], ["20131002", 15], ["20131003", 5]]

Upvotes: 1

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