In Ruby what is the meaning of colon after identifier in a Hash?

Question

I\'m learning about Factory Girl and I saw this code:

factory :post do
  association :author, factory: :user, last_name: \"Writely\"
end

why do

Answer 1

The colon in this context denotes a literal Hash.

factory is the Hash key, :user is the value.

The alternative syntax is :factory => :user. They mean the same thing.