Sort items in a nested hash by their values - ruby

Question

I'm being sent a nested hash that needs to be sorted by its values. For example:
#foo = {"a"=>{"z"=>5, "y"=>3, "x"=>88}, "b"=>{"a"=>2, "d"=>-5}}
When running the following:
#foo["a"].sort{|a,b| a[1]<=>b[1]}
I get:
[["y", 3], ["z", 5], ["x", 88]]
This is great, it's exactly what I want. The problem is I'm not always going to know what all the keys are that are being sent to me so I need some sort of loop. I tried to do the following:
#foo.each do |e|
e.sort{|a,b| a[1]<=>b[1]}
end
This to me makes sense since if I manually call #foo.first[0] I get
"a"
and #foo.first[1] returns
{"z"=>5, "y"=>3, "x"=>8}
but for some reason this isn't sorting properly (e.g. at all). I assume this is because the each is calling sort on the entire hash object rather than on "a"'s values. How do I access the values of the nested hash without knowing what it's key is?

Answer 1

You might want to loop over the hash like this:
#foo.each do |key, value|
#foo[key] = value.sort{ |a,b| a[1]<=>b[1] }
end

Answer 2

#foo = {"a"=>{"z"=>5, "y"=>3, "x"=>88}, "b"=>{"a"=>2, "d"=>-5}}
#bar = Hash[ #foo.map{ |key,values| [ key, values.sort_by(&:last) ] } ]
Or, via a less-tricky path:
#bar = {}
#foo.each do |key,values|
#bar[key] = values.sort_by{ |key,value| value }
end
In both cases #bar turns out to be:
p #bar
#=> {
#=> "a"=>[["y", 3], ["z", 5], ["x", 88]],
#=> "b"=>[["d", -5], ["a", 2]]
#=> }

Answer 3

My coworker came up with a slightly more flexible solution that will recursively sort an array of any depth:
def deep_sort_by(&block)
Hash[self.map do |key, value|
[if key.respond_to? :deep_sort_by
key.deep_sort_by(&block)
else
key
end,
if value.respond_to? :deep_sort_by
value.deep_sort_by(&block)
else
value
end]
end.sort_by(&block)]
end
You can inject it into all hashes and then just call it like this:
myMap.deep_sort_by { |obj| obj }
The code would be similar for an array. We published it as a gem for others to use, see blog post for additional details.
Disclaimer: I work for this company.

Answer 4

in your example e is an temporary array containing a [key,value] pair. In this case, the character key and the nested hash. So e.sort{|a,b|...} is going to try to compare the character to the hash, and fails with a runtime error. I think you probably meant to type e[1].sort{...}. But even that is not going to work correctly, because you don't store the sorted hash anywhere: #foo.each returns the original #foo and leaves it unchanged.
The better solution is the one suggested by #Pan Thomakos:
#foo.each do |key, value|
#foo[key] = value.sort{ |a,b| a[1]<=>b[1] }
end