dweebd

Ever have to map all the keys of a Hash, or Hash-like Ruby object? For example, you have a Hash mapping keys to the binary contents of several files, and you want to present those file contents as Base64.

Imagine we have a Hash that looks something like this:

pictures_hash = {
  'goblins' => PICTURE_OF_GOBLINS,
  'kittens' => PICTURE_OF_KITTENS
}

If you were just doing this mapping inline, it might look like this:

pictures_hash.inject({}) do |accumulate, (key, binary)|
  accumulate[key] = Base64.encode64(binary)
  accumulate
end

Instead of typing out almost-identical code over and over again, here’s an implementation as a simple block-receiving method on Hash itself.

class Hash
  def map_values
    inject(self.dup) do |a, (k,v)|
      a[k] = yield(v)
      a
    end
  end
end

Now the code to Base64 encode the file contents becomes this much simpler snippet.

pictures_hash.map_values do |binary|
  Base64.encode64(binary)
end