Turning a Hash of Arrays into an Array of Hashes in Ruby

Question

We have the following datastructures:

{:a => [\"val1\", \"val2\"], :b => [\"valb1\", \"valb2\"], ...}

And I want to turn that into

Answer 1

Let's look closely what the data structure we are trying to convert between:

#Format A
[
 ["val1", "val2"],          :a
 ["valb1", "valb2"],        :b 
 ["valc1", "valc2"]         :c 
]
#Format B
[ :a        :b       :c
 ["val1", "valb1", "valc1"],
 ["val2", "valb2", "valc3"]
]

It is not diffculty to find Format B is the transpose of Format A in essential , then we can come up with this solution:

h={:a => ["vala1", "vala2"], :b => ["valb1", "valb2"], :c => ["valc1", "valc2"]}
sorted_keys =  h.keys.sort_by {|a,b| a.to_s <=> b.to_s}

puts sorted_keys.inject([])  {|s,e| s << h[e]}.transpose.inject([])   {|r, a| r << Hash[*sorted_keys.zip(a).flatten]}.inspect
#[{:b=>"valb1", :c=>"valc1", :a=>"vala1"}, {:b=>"valb2", :c=>"valc2", :a=>"vala2"}]

Answer 2

m = {}
a,b = Array(h).transpose
b.transpose.map { |y| [a, y].transpose.inject(m) { |m,x| m.merge Hash[*x] }}

Answer 3

My attempt, perhaps slightly more compact.

h = { :a => ["val1", "val2"], :b => ["valb1", "valb2"] }

h.values.transpose.map { |s| Hash[h.keys.zip(s)] }

Should work in Ruby 1.9.3 or later.

---

Explanation:

First, 'combine' the corresponding values into 'rows'

h.values.transpose
# => [["val1", "valb1"], ["val2", "valb2"]] 

Each iteration in the map block will produce one of these:

h.keys.zip(s)
# => [[:a, "val1"], [:b, "valb1"]]

and Hash[] will turn them into hashes:

Hash[h.keys.zip(s)]
# => {:a=>"val1", :b=>"valb1"}      (for each iteration)

Answer 4

You could use inject to build an array of hashes.

hash = { :a => ["val1", "val2"], :b => ["valb1", "valb2"] }
array = hash.inject([]) do |pairs, pair|
  pairs << { pair[0] => pair[1] }
  pairs
end
array.inspect # => "[{:a=>["val1", "val2"]}, {:b=>["valb1", "valb2"]}]"

Ruby documentation has a few more examples of working with inject.

Answer 5

This will work assuming all the arrays in the original hash are the same size:

hash_array = hash.first[1].map { {} }
hash.each do |key,arr|
  hash_array.zip(arr).each {|inner_hash, val| inner_hash[key] = val}
end

Answer 6

Using a functional approach (see Enumerable):

hs = h.values.transpose.map { |vs| h.keys.zip(vs).to_h }
#=> [{:a=>"val1", :b=>"valb1"}, {:a=>"val2", :b=>"valb2"}]

And back:

h_again = hs.first.keys.zip(hs.map(&:values).transpose).to_h
#=> {:a=>["val1", "val2"], :b=>["valb1", "valb2"]}