Let's say I have a Gift object with @name = "book" & @price = 15.95. What's the best way to convert that to the Hash {name: "book", price: 15.95} in Ruby, not Rails (although feel free to give the Rails answer too)?


Just say (current object) .attributes

.attributes returns a hash of any object. And it's much cleaner too.


class Gift
  def initialize
    @name = "book"
    @price = 15.95
  end
end

gift = Gift.new
hash = {}
gift.instance_variables.each {|var| hash[var.to_s.delete("@")] = gift.instance_variable_get(var) }
p hash # => {"name"=>"book", "price"=>15.95}

Alternatively with each_with_object:

gift = Gift.new
hash = gift.instance_variables.each_with_object({}) { |var, hash| hash[var.to_s.delete("@")] = gift.instance_variable_get(var) }
p hash # => {"name"=>"book", "price"=>15.95}

Implement #to_hash?

class Gift
  def to_hash
    hash = {}
    instance_variables.each { |var| hash[var.to_s.delete('@')] = instance_variable_get(var) }
    hash
  end
end


h = Gift.new("Book", 19).to_hash

Gift.new.instance_values # => {"name"=>"book", "price"=>15.95}

You can use as_json method. It'll convert your object into hash.

But, that hash will come as a value to the name of that object as a key. In your case,

{'gift' => {'name' => 'book', 'price' => 15.95 }}

If you need a hash that's stored in the object use as_json(root: false). I think by default root will be false. For more info refer official ruby guide

http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveModel/Serializers/JSON.html#method-i-as_json