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objects_to_text.rb

This Ruby code snippet demonstrates how to iterate over a collection of hashes and output the values for each key in a tab-delimited format. The first line of the output is the header row, which includes the keys for the hashes in the collection. Each subsequent line represents an entry in the collection, with the values for each key being delimited by tabs.

Here’s a breakdown of the code:

  1. The data variable is initialized to an array of two hashes. Each hash contains three keys: id, val1, and val2.
  2. The first line of output is generated using the keys method on the first entry in the collection, which returns an array of strings containing the keys for that hash. The join method is used to join these keys with tabs between them, and the result is printed to the console.
  3. The each method is used to iterate over each entry in the collection. For each entry, the values for each key are extracted using the [] syntax.
  4. The maximum length of the val1 and val2 arrays is determined by finding the largest value between the two lengths. This ensures that the output lines will have the same number of tabs.
  5. A loop is used to iterate over the maximum length of the val1 and val2 arrays, starting from zero. For each iteration, the id, val1, and val2 values are extracted from the current entry in the collection. If a value is nil, an empty string is used as a placeholder.
  6. The id, val1, and val2 values are joined with tabs between them using the join method, and then printed to the console.

Ruby code snippet

data = [
  {:id => "a", :val1 => [1, 2, 3], :val2 => [3, 4]},
  {:id => "b", :val1 => [0], :val2 => [9, 8, 7]}
]
#=> 
[{id: "a", val1: [1, 2, 3], val2: [3, 4]},


puts data.first.keys.join("\t")
id	val1	val2
#=> nil

data.each do |entry|
  id = entry[:id]
  val1 = entry[:val1]
  val2 = entry[:val2]
  
  max_length = [val1.length, val2.length].max
  max_length.times do |i|
      id_output = (i == 0 ? id : "")
      
      val1_output = (val1[i].nil? ? "" : val1[i])
      val2_output = (val2[i].nil? ? "" : val2[i])
      
      puts [id_output, val1_output, val2_output].join("\t")
  end
end
a	1	3
	2	4
	3	
b	0	9
		8
		7
#=> 
[{id: "a", val1: [1, 2, 3], val2: [3, 4]},
 {id: "b", val1: [0], val2: [9, 8, 7]}]

Executed with Ruby 3.4.4.