Ruby on Rails Tutorial: Defining a hash with symbol keys

Question

Regarding the exercises in Michael Hartl's RoR Tutorial in lesson 4.3.3 (Hashes & Symbols):

"Define a hash with symbol keys corresponding to name, email, and a “password digest”, and values equal to your name, your email address, and a random string of 16 lower-case letters."

I am hoping to get some input and/or alternative & 'better' solutions to this (or at least some criticism regarding my solution).

def my_hash
  a = ('a'..'z').to_a.shuffle[0..15].join
  b = { name: "John", email: "[email protected]", password: a }
  return b
end

puts my_hash

(Yes I realize this is a very simple exercise and apologize if it has been asked before.)

Aleksei Matiushkin Aleksei Matiushkin · Accepted Answer · 2017-07-11T13:14:55

There are many 2 improvements could be made:

Use Array#sample to get random letters (it has an advantage: the letter might in fact repeat in the password, while shuffle[0..15] will return 16 distinct letters);
Avoid redundant local variables and especially return.

Here you go:

def my_hash
  {
    name: "John",
    email: "[email protected]",
    password: ('a'..'z').to_a.sample(16).join
  }
end

puts my_hash

Bonus:

I accidentaly found the third glitch in the original code. It should probably be:

def my_hash
  {
    name: "Brandon",
    email: "[email protected]",
    password: ('a'..'z').to_a.sample(16).join
  }
end

:)

Ruby on Rails Tutorial: Defining a hash with symbol keys

1 Answers