Parsing a JSON string in Ruby

Question

I have a string that I want to parse in Ruby:

string = '{"desc":{"someKey":"someValue","anotherKey":"value"},"main_item":{"stats":{"a":8,"b":12,"c":10}}}'

Is there an easy way to extract the data?

Answer 1

This looks like JavaScript Object Notation (JSON). You can parse JSON that resides in some variable, e.g. json_string, like so:

require 'json'
JSON.parse(json_string)

If you’re using an older Ruby, you may need to install the json gem.

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There are also other implementations of JSON for Ruby that may fit some use-cases better:

• YAJL C Bindings for Ruby
• JSON::Stream