Hash creation with symbols and strings in Ruby - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Hash creation with symbols and strings

📖 Scenario: You are creating a simple contact list where each contact has a name and a phone number. You will use a Ruby hash to store this information.

🎯 Goal: Build a Ruby hash that uses both symbols and strings as keys to store contact names and their phone numbers.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a hash with symbol keys and string keys

Use exact keys and values as specified

Access and print the hash content

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Storing contact information in hashes is common in many Ruby applications like address books or user profiles.

💼 Career

Understanding how to use symbols and strings as hash keys is important for Ruby developers working with data structures and APIs.

1

Create a hash with symbol keys

Create a Ruby hash called contacts with these exact entries: :alice with value "123-4567", and :bob with value "987-6543".

Ruby

# Create the contacts hash with symbol keys
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use the Ruby hash syntax with symbols as keys like alice: "123-4567".

2

Add string keys to the hash

Add two more entries to the contacts hash with string keys: "carol" with value "555-1234", and "dave" with value "555-5678".

Ruby

contacts = { alice: "123-4567", bob: "987-6543" }
# Add string keys "carol" and "dave" with their phone numbers
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use square brackets to add string keys like contacts["carol"] = "555-1234".

3

Access and print all contacts

Use a contacts.each loop with variables key and value to iterate over the contacts hash and create a new hash called formatted_contacts where keys are strings (convert symbols to strings) and values are the phone numbers.

Ruby

contacts = { alice: "123-4567", bob: "987-6543" }
contacts["carol"] = "555-1234"
contacts["dave"] = "555-5678"

formatted_contacts = {}
# Use contacts.each to fill formatted_contacts with string keys
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use key.to_s to convert symbol keys to strings inside the loop.

4

Print the formatted contacts hash

Write puts formatted_contacts to display the formatted_contacts hash.

Ruby

contacts = { alice: "123-4567", bob: "987-6543" }
contacts["carol"] = "555-1234"
contacts["dave"] = "555-5678"

formatted_contacts = {}
contacts.each do |key, value|
  formatted_contacts[key.to_s] = value
end

# Print the formatted_contacts hash
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use puts to print the hash. The output will show keys as strings.