Understanding map in Ruby - ruby

Question

I'm pretty new to Ruby and am trying to understand an example of the map method that I came across:
{:a => "foo", :b => "bar"}.map{|a, b| "#{a}=#{b}"}.join('&')
which returns:
=> "a=foo&b=bar"
I don't understand how the
b=bar
is returned. The string interpolation is what is confusing me as it seems it would return something like:
=> "a=foo&bbar"

Answer 1

> {:a => "foo", :b => "bar"}.map{|key, value| "#{key}=#{value}"}
#=> ["a=foo", "b=bar"]
map method will fetch each element of hash as key and value pair
"#{key}=#{value}" is a String Interpolation which adds = between your key and value
Using this syntax everything between the opening #{ and closing } bits
is evaluated as Ruby code, and the result of this evaluation will be
embedded into the string surrounding it.
Array#join will returns a string created by converting each element of the array to a string, separated by the given separator.
so here in your case:
> ["a=foo", "b=bar"].join('&')
#=> "a=foo&b=bar"
In Rails you can convert hash to query params using Hash#to_query method, which will return the same result.
> {:a => "foo", :b => "bar"}.to_query
#=> "a=foo&b=bar"

Answer 2

The symbol key :a and the local variable a have nothing in common. The names are only coincidentally the same. Consider this code instead:
{
var1: "value1",
var2: "value2"
}.map do |key, value|
"#{key}=#{value}"
end.join('&')
# => "var1=value1&var2=value2"
Here the variables are different. What map does, like each, is iterate over each key-value pair in the Hash. That means you can do things like this, too, to simplify:
{
var1: "value1",
var2: "value2"
}.map do |pair|
pair.join('=')
end.join('&')
# => "var1=value1&var2=value2"
Normally when iterating over a Hash you should use names like k,v or key,value to be clear on what you're operating on.
If you're ever confused what's going on internally in an iteration loop, you can debug like this:
{
var1: "value1",
var2: "value2"
}.map do |pair|
puts pair.inspect
pair.join('=')
end.join('&')
That gives you this output:
[:var1, "value1"]
[:var2, "value2"]
That technique helps a lot. There's even the short-hand notation for this:
p pair

Answer 3

There are 2 method calls occurring here, the map and the join. One way to make it clearer and easier to understand is to separate the two methods and alter the keywords used in the map method. So instead of
{:a => "foo", :b => "bar"}.map{|a, b| "#{a}=#{b}"}.join('&')
Lets have
{:a => "foo", :b => "bar"}.map{|key, value| "#{key}=#{value}"}
This returns an array. #=> ["a=foo", "b=bar"]
Now:
["a=foo", "b=bar"].join('&')
produces a sting
#=> "a=foo&b=bar"
Map is iterating over the two key/value pairs and creating a string with the '=' between them and returns it in an array. It would iterate over all the key/value pairs in the harsh. Our example just has 2.
Join attaches the two elements of the array together with the '&' symbol between them and returns it as string. It would attach all elements of the array no matter its size.
What helped me to learn map and join is to open up the irb or pry and create a few hashes and arrays and play around with them. I highly recommend using unique names for your values that explain what is going on.
I hope this helps you.