Search a value across 2 array

Question

I want to find the corresponding hash in an array from a string that contains a criterion defined in a hash of the array.

I do something like that :

types = [
 {key: 'type_1', criteria: ['type_1a', 'type_1b']},
 {key: 'type_2', criteria: ['type_2a', 'type_2b']},
 ...
]
def find_type(str)
 types.each do |type|
 type[:criteria].each do |criterion|
 return type if str =~ /#{criterion}/i
 end
 end
 nil
end

I'm sure it could be more ruby but don't find how...

Answer 1

The orthodox (and functional) approach in Ruby is:

def find_type(types, str)
 types.detect do |type|
 type[:criteria].any? do |criterion|
 str =~ /#{criterion}/i # or Regexp.new(criterion, "i")
 end
 end
end

• Cary Swoveland: To guard against the possibility that any of the hashes to not have the key :criteria, you may want to replace h[:criteria] with (h[:criteria] || []).
• Cary Swoveland: You forgot that the method needs types as an argument. I'll be deleting this comment...
• tokland: I guess types was not really a local variable but something accessible by the method. Anyway, added as an argument.