Ruby Build Hash from file - ruby

Question

I'm consuming a web-service and using Savon to do +-1000 (paid) requests and parse the requests to a csv file.
I save the xml.hash response in a file if the parsing failed.
How can I initialize an hash that was saved to a file? (or should I save in XML and then let savon make it into a hash it again?
Extra info:
client = Savon.client do
wsdl "url"
end
response = client.call(:read_request) do
message "dat:number" => number
end
I use the response.hash to build/parse my csv data. Ex:
name = response.hash[:description][:name]
If the building failed I'm thinking about saving the response.hash to a file. But the problem is I don't know how to reuse the saved response (XML/Hash) so that an updated version of the building/parsing can be run using the saved response.

Answer 1

You want to serialize the Hash to a file then deserialize it back again.
You can do it in text with YAML or JSON and in a binary via Marshal.
Marshal
def serialize_marshal filepath, object
File.open( filepath, "wb" ) {|f| Marshal.dump object, f }
end
def deserialize_marshal filepath
File.open( filepath, "rb") {|f| Marshal.load(f)}
end
Marshaled data has a major and minor version number written with it, so it's not guaranteed to always load in another Ruby if the Marshal data version changes.
YAML
require 'yaml'
def serialize_yaml filepath, object
File.open( filepath, "w" ) {|f| YAML.dump object, f }
end
def deserialize_yaml filepath
File.open( filepath, "r") {|f| YAML.load(f) }
end
JSON
require 'json'
def serialize_json filepath, object
File.open( filepath, "w" ) {|f| JSON.dump object, f }
end
def deserialize_json filepath
File.open( filepath, "r") {|f| JSON.load(f)}
end
Anecdotally, YAML is slow, Marshal and JSON are quick.

Answer 2

If your code is expecting to use/manipulate a ruby hash as demonstrated above, then if you want to save the Savon response, then use the json gem and do something like:
require 'json'
File.open("responseX.json","w") do |f|
f << response.hash.to_json
end
Then if you need to read that file to recreate your response hash:
File.open('responseX.json').each do |line|
reponseHash = JSON.parse(line)
# do something with responseHash
end