Split string into a hash?

Question

I have the following example string:

"[email protected]&user_id=13&last_seen=January 14, 2013"

And I need is converted to a hash:

{ :email=>[email protected], :user_id=>13, :last_seen => 'January 14, 2013' }

How can I do that? The keys and values could be anything (they won't always be email and user_id) and there could be dozens of them.

Answer 1

Use the CGI library you already get for free:

require 'cgi'

parsed = CGI.parse("[email protected]&user_id=13&last_seen=January 14, 2013")

# => {"email"=>["[email protected]"], "user_id"=>["13"], "last_seen"=>["January 14, 2013"]}

Or if you're using rack:

require 'rack/utils'

parsed = Rack::Utils.parse_query("[email protected]&user_id=13&last_seen=January 14, 2013")

# => {"email"=>"[email protected]", "user_id"=>"13", "last_seen"=>"January 14, 2013"}