Saneitized

Saneitized takes strings turns those values into their sane ruby equivalents. For example how many times have you done something like the following

hash = JSON.parse("{\"should_explode\":\"false\"}")

hash['should_explode']        #=> 'false'

if hash['should_explode']
  explode_all_the_bombs       #=> 'Bombs are exploding'
end

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'saneitized'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install saneitized

Usage

The guts of sanitized is it's convert method, it will converts strings into their approprate types. It tries to convert strings in the following order, trying the next thing if it fails or returning the new value if it succeeds

Boolean: Saneitized.convert('true') #=> true ('false' works the same way)
nil:     Saneitized.convert('null') #=> nil  (also converts 'nil' and 'NULL')
Integer: Saneitized.convert('42') #=> 42
Float:   Saneitized.convert('22.2') #=> 22.2
JSON:    Saneitized.convert("{\"hello\":\"goodbye\"}") #=> {"hello"=>"goodbye"}
Time:    Saneitized.convert("2014-05-28T23:15:26Z") #=> 2014-05-28 23:15:26 UTC

You can checkout lib/saneitized/converter.rb for more information

Sanetized ignores all non-string types except Arrays and Hashes.

Arrays and Hashes

Arrays and hashes are recursivly traversed and saneitized. So something like

insane = [{'number' => '10'}, {'float' => '34.5'}]
sane = Sanitized.convert(insane)              # Sanitized::Array.new(insane) is equivelent
sane == [{'number' => 10}, {'float' => 34.5}] # Note this is a Sanitized::Array

Note that the returned types are Saneitized::Hash or Saneitized::Array, these function almost the same as regular arrays except that new assigned values will also be saneitized

hash = Saneitized::Hash.new
hash['fred'] = '234'
hash['fred'] #=> 234

Blacklists

You can make sanitized ignore certain strings by includeing a blacklist option

Sanitized.convert('23', blacklist:%w(21 22 23)) => '23'

Important Notes

To convert a sanetized array/hash back to a non-saneitized hash, simply call the #to_a and #to_h methods, but keep in mind that the resulting hash still points to the same underlying data, for example.

h = Sanetized::Hash.new({'key' => '10'})
h #=> {'key' => 10}
h['key'] = '20'
h #=> {'key' => 20}
hh = h.to_h
hh['key'] = '30'
h #=> {'key' => '30'}

This is how normal ruby arrays and hashes work as well, if you want a new copy, you need to call dup.

NotImplementedError

If you run across a NotImplementedError with something that should works with a regular hash or array, it's because I plan to implement the saneitized version, but haven't had a need for it yet, you are welcome to submit pull requests that implements these holes.

More Example

sane_hash = Saneitized::Hash.new({:false =>  'false',
                                  :number => '10',
                                  :float  => '42.4'})

sane_hash[:false]   #=> false
sane_hash[:number]  #=> 10
sane_hash[:float]   #=> 42.4

See the specs for more examples.

Contributing

Fork it ( http://github.com//saneitized_hash/fork )
Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
Writes Specs, pull requrests will not be accepted without tests.
Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
Create new Pull Request