Intellihash

A fast implementation of hashes as objects, benchmarked against OpenStruct. It allows chaining hash attributes as method calls instead of standard hash syntax.

Since an Intellihash extends the native Ruby Hash, this means instantiating a new intelligent hash is just as fast as a normal hash, and you retain the ability to call all the normal instance methods on it.

intellihash = {
    foo: {
        bar: {
            baz: {
                bat: :bam
            }
        }
    }
}

intellihash.foo.bar.baz.bat

#=> :bam

You can achieve similar results by converting your hash to an OpenStruct:

hash = {
    foo: {
        bar: {
            baz: {
                bat: :bam
            }
        }
    }
}

open_struct = OpenStruct.new(hash)
open_struct.foo.bar.baz.bat

#=> :bam

But you lose access to your instance methods, and pay a performance penalty to instantiate it!

intellihash.size
#=> 1

open_struct.size
#=> nil

Creating an Intellihash is approximately 5x faster than instantiating an OpenStruct.

                  user     system      total        real                
OpenStruct:   4.046875   0.906250   4.953125 (  4.979611)
Intellihash:  0.828125   0.125000   0.953125 (  0.956110)

See Testing Performance for details on running benchmarks.

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'intellihash'

And then execute:

$ bundle install

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install intellihash

If you need to customize Intellihash, you may create a configuration:

Intellihash.configure do |config|
    config.enabled                = true     # (Boolean) Default: false 
    config.default_format         = :symbol  # (Symbol)  Default: :symbol
    config.intelligent_by_default = false    # (Boolean) Default: false
end

• enabled
  • Whether Intellihash is enabled or not
  • You may wish to set this conditionally, such as enabling it only in a test environment
    • i.e. config.enabled = Rails.env.test?
  • NOTE: Once Intellihash is enabled, it cannot easily be disabled. Enable Intellihash with caution.
• default_format
  • Valid values: :sym, :symbol, :str, :string, :any
  • This determines the default storage and retrieval options
• intelligent_by_default
  • Whether newly created hashes are intelligent
  • When false, new hashes can still be converted to intelligent hashes via hash.is_intelligent = true or hash.to_intellihash!

Place the above configuration in an initializer (such as config/initializers/intellihash.rb)

If you've configured Intellihash intelligent_by_default = true, you need to do nothing else as all new hashes are Intellihashes.

However, if you prefer not to use this configuration, you can create an Intellihash from any existing hash:

hash = { foo: :bar }

hash.is_intelligent?
#=> false

hash.is_intelligent = true
# or
hash.to_intellihash!

hash.is_intelligent? 
#=> true

Intellihash-powered hashes can access values via method chaining:

intellihash = { foo: :bar }

intellihash.foo

#=> :bar

They can also store values in a similar way:

intellihash.baz = :bat
intellihash

#=> { foo: :bar, baz: :bat }

When configured correctly, they work even when the object contains arrays and other classes:

Intellihash.configure do |config|
    config.enabled                = true
    config.intelligent_by_default = true
    config.default_format         = :any
end

intellihash = {
    a: {
        complicated: [
            {
                object: {
                    "containing_many" => {
                        types_of_things: Also::Works       
                    }
                }
            }
        ]
    }
}

intellihash.a.complicated.first.object.containing_many.types_of_things

#=> Also::Works

When using an Intellihash that has an ambiguous key (i.e. the key exists both as a symbol and a string in the same hash), you can define which you would like to return at runtime:

intellihash ={
    foo: :bar
    'foo' => 'bar'
}

intellihash.foo(from: :symbol) # or from: :sym
#=> :bar

intellihash.foo(from: :string) # or from: :str
#=> 'bar'

If you prefer, you can use the original hash syntax:

intellihash[:foo]
#=> :bar

intellihash['foo']
#=> 'bar'

NOTE: Intellihashes always store values as the configured default_format, which defaults to :symbol. Override this in the config as needed, or use hash syntax: intellihash['bar'] = 'bat'.

A powerful feature of Intellihash is the ability to use Ruby Hash instance methods on Intellihash. This also means that it's possible for some of the keys in the hash to collide with the names of the instance method you're trying to call.

For instance, consider Hash#size, which returns the number of keys in the hash:

intellihash = { size: 2 }

intellihash.size
#=> 1

For this reason, it's better to use hash syntax to fetch these keys:

# Bad
intellihash.size

# Good
intellihash[:size]
intellihash.fetch(:size)

You can, however, set keys in the hash using these instance methods. This is not recommended as the syntax leads to confusion when attempting to access the key.

intellihash.size = 3
intellihash

#=> { size: 3 }

intellihash.size
#=> 1

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake spec to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

Run unit tests:

bundle exec rspec

Run performance benchmarks:

bundle exec rspec --tag performance:true

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/ty-porter/intellihash.

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.