No commit activity in last 3 years
No release in over 3 years
I heard you like hashes within your hashes, so I made a thing to initialise hashes within your hashes (and more!)
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
2022
2023
2024
 Dependencies

Development

~> 1.0
~> 2.1.0
~> 3.12
~> 3.5.0
 Project Readme

hash-initializer

Initialise Ruby hashes with multiple levels of default values

Install

gem install hash-initializer

Or add to your Gemfile and go forth.

Example usage

With numeric values

my_hash = HashInitializer[0]

my_hash[:foo]  # => 0
my_hash[:foo] += 1
my_hash[:foo]  # => 1
my_hash[:bar]  # => 0

With hash values

my_hash = HashInitializer[:hash]

my_hash[:foo]  # => {}
my_hash[:foo][:bar]  # => nil
my_hash[:foo][:bar] = 'a'
my_hash[:foo][:bar]  # 'a'

How about array values

my_hash = HashInitializer[:array]

my_hash[:foo]  # => []
my_hash[:foo] << 'a'
my_hash[:foo]  # ['a']

Watch out though, you can end up sharing the same array instance (you probably shouldn't do this!)

my_hash = HashInitializer[[]]

my_hash[:foo]  # => []
my_hash[:bar]  # => []
my_hash[:foo] << 'a'
my_hash[:foo]  # ['a']
my_hash[:bar]  # ['a']
my_hash[:foo].equal?(my_hash[:bar])  # true

… and you can end up sharing the same hash instance!

my_hash = HashInitializer[{}]

my_hash[:foo]  # {}
my_hash[:foo][:bar] = 1
my_hash[:foo][:bar]  # => 1
my_hash[:bob]  # => { bar: 1 }
my_hash[:foo].equal?(my_hash[:bob])  # true

Nested hashes

my_hash = HashInitializer[
  :hash,
    :hash,
      1.0
]

my_hash[:foo][:bar][:baz]  # => 1.0
my_hash[:foo][:bar][:baz] += 1.5
my_hash[:foo][:bar][:baz]  # => 2.5

Caution

Use with consideration! Great for temporary data (e.g. whilst processing), or for playing around. But for anything more substantial consider building a proper model layer with first class objects / structs.

Contributing to hash-initializer

  • Check out the latest master to make sure the feature hasn't been implemented or the bug hasn't been fixed yet.
  • Check out the issue tracker to make sure someone already hasn't requested it and/or contributed it.
  • Fork the project.
  • Start a feature/bugfix branch.
  • Commit and push until you are happy with your contribution.
  • Make sure to add tests for it. This is important so I don't break it in a future version unintentionally.
  • Please try not to mess with the Rakefile, version, or history. If you want to have your own version, or is otherwise necessary, that is fine, but please isolate to its own commit so I can cherry-pick around it.

Copyright

Copyright (c) 2018 Jits. See LICENSE.txt for further details.