MatchyMatchy

A cute little implementation of the Stable Match algorithm, built by and for the New Zealand Improv Festival.

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'matchy_matchy'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install matchy_matchy

The MatchMaker takes two sets of data:

• a Hash of candidates and their preferred targets
• a Hash of targets to tuples containing their preferred targets and the number of candidates they're allowed to select

Calling perform on a MatchMaker yields an object that can return the assignments keyed either by_candidate or by_target.

candidates = {
  'Arthur'  => %w[City],
  'Sunny'   => %w[City Mercy],
  'Joseph'  => %w[City General Mercy],
  'Latha'   => %w[Mercy City General],
  'Darrius' => %w[City Mercy General],
}

targets = {
  'Mercy'   => [%w[Darrius Joseph], 2],
  'City'    => [%w[Darrius Arthur Sunny Latha Joseph], 2],
  'General' => [%w[Darrius Arthur Joseph Latha], 2],
}

results = MatchyMatchy::MatchMaker.perform(
  targets: targets,
  candidates: candidates
)

results.by_candidate
# {
#  'Arthur'  => 'City',
#  'Sunny'   => nil,
#  'Joseph'  => 'General',
#  'Latha'   => 'General',
#  'Darrius' => 'City',
# }

results.by_target
# {
#  'Mercy'   => []
#  'City'    => ['Darrius', 'Arthur'],
#  'General' => ['Joseph', 'Latha'],
# }

The candidates and targets can be pretty much any type of object. They can even clash, which makes it safe to use things like database IDs unambiguously: equal objects that are referenced in both collections will be treated separately by the MatchMaker.

You can also specify the targets without an explicit capacity, in which case a default capacity of 1 will be assumed:

targets = {
  'Mercy'   => %w[Darrius Joseph],
  'City'    => %w[Darrius Arthur Sunny Latha Joseph],
  'General' => %w[Darrius Arthur Joseph Latha],
}

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake spec to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub. This project is intended to be a safe, welcoming space for collaboration, and contributors are expected to adhere to the Contributor Covenant code of conduct.

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.

Everyone interacting in the MatchyMatchy project’s codebases, issue trackers, chat rooms and mailing lists is expected to follow the code of conduct.