Convert a hash into another hash in Ruby

Question

I have a hash of strings

navigable_objects = { 'Dashboard' => root_path,
                      'Timesheets' => timesheets_path,
                      'Clients' => clients_path,
                      'Projects' => projects_path, 
                    }

I want to convert them into another hash where the key is again the key, but the value is either the string 'active' or empty string depending on whether the current controller name contains the key.

For example, lets say that the current controller name is "ClientsController". The result I should get is:

{ 'Dashboard' => '',
  'Timesheets' => '',
  'Clients' => 'active',
  'Projects' => ''
}

Here is how I am currently doing it:

active = {}

navigable_objects.each do |name, path|
  active[name] = (controller.controller_name.include?(name)) ? 'active' : '')
end 

I feel that while this works, there is a better way to do this in Ruby, possibly using inject or each_with_objects?

Answer 1

UPDATE: I posted another answer that I think is better for your situation. I'm leaving this one un-edited though because it has merit on its own for similar problems.

Here's the way I'd do it:

Hash[*navigable_objects.map{ |k,v| [k, controller.controller_name.include?(k) ? 'active' : ''] }.flatten]

You can run map on a hash that gets key and value pairs as input to the block. Then you can construct pairs of key/values into arrays as the output. Finally, Running Hash[*key_value_pairs.flatten] is a nice trick to turn it back into a hash. This works because you can pass an array of arguments to the Hash[] constructor to generate a hash (Hash[1, 2, 3, 4] => { 1 => 2, 3 => 4 }). And flatten turns the key value pairs into an array, and * operator turns an array into a list of arguments.

Here's a verbose version in case you want to see more clearly what's going on:

key_value_pairs = navigable_objects.map do |key, value|
    new_value = controller.controller_name.include?(k) ? 'active' : ''
    [key, new_value]
end

new_hash = Hash[*key_value_pairs.flatten]

Update: This above is compatible with ruby 1.8. As Andrew pointed out in the comments:

In 1.9 you don't need the * or flatten as Hash[] takes key-value array pairs