Hash inside YAML file?

Question

I want to include a hash and list inside a YAML file that I'm parsing with the following command:

APP_CONFIG = YAML.load_file("#{RAILS_ROOT}/config/config.yml")

My YAML file looks like this:

feeds: [{:url => 'http://www.google.com', :label => 'default'}]

But this doesn't seem to work. How would I go about achieving such a thing?

Thanks, Yuval

EDIT: Sorry, guys. I'm still unclear about how to do this and I suspect it is in part due to my somewhat vague phrasing. I asked a better-phrased, more broad question here. Thank you!

score 32 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 13 '10 at 22:06

You can mark it up like this

feeds:
 - 
  url: 'http://www.google.com'
  label: 'default'

Note the spacing is important here. "-" must be indented by a single space (not a tab), and followed by a single space. And url & label must be indented by two spaces (not tabs either).

Additionally this might be helpful: http://www.yaml.org/YAML_for_ruby.html

score 16 · Answer 2 · edited Nov 09 '17 at 22:05

16

Ceilingfish's answer is maybe technically correct, but he recommends to use a white space at the end of a line. This is prone to errors and is not a good practice!

This is how I would do it:

Create a settings.yaml file with the following contents:

---
feeds:
  :url: 'http://www.google.com'
  :label: 'default'

This will create the following hash after the YAML file has been loaded:

irb(main):001:0> require 'yaml'
=> true
irb(main):002:0> YAML.load_file('settings.yaml')
=> {"feeds"=>{:url=>"http://www.google.com", :label=>"default"}}
irb(main):003:0>

In this example, I also use symbols since this seems to be the preferred way of storing Ruby keys in Ruby.

edited Nov 09 '17 at 22:05

Alex Pan

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answered Jun 14 '13 at 13:41

jpoppe

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But would this really produce what he requested? I think he wants "feeds" to be a list of hashes, not just a hash. I'm kind of in the same spot, and also don't like the fragile approach that requires trailing space. Any ideas? – estan Mar 18 '15 at 19:09
Nevermind. I figured it out. Will post my own answer to this question. – estan Mar 18 '15 at 19:12

estan · Answer 3 · 2015-03-18T19:31:26.307

7

Old question, but since I was in a similar spot... Like Jasper pointed out, Ceilingfish's answer is correct. But you can also do

feeds:
 - url: 'http://www.google.com'
   label: 'default'

to avoid having to rely on trailing whitespace after the dash.

edited Mar 18 '15 at 19:31

answered Mar 18 '15 at 19:17

estan

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Hash inside YAML file?

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