How do I access this JSON API data in Ruby? - json

Question

I am writing a short Ruby program that is going to take a zipcode and return the names of cities within 2 miles of that zipcode. I successfully called an API and was able to parse the JSON data, but I'm unsure how to access the 'city' key.
url = API call (not going to replicate here since it requires a key)
uri = URI(url)
response = Net::HTTP.get(uri)
JSON.parse(response)
Here's what my JSON looks like.
{
"results": [
{
"zip": "08225",
"city": "Northfield",
"county": "Atlantic",
"state": "NJ",
"distance": "0.0"
},
{
"zip": "08221",
"city": "Linwood",
"county": "Atlantic",
"state": "NJ",
"distance": "1.8"
}
]
}
I've been trying to access 'city' like this:
response['result'][0]['city']
This appears to be incorrect. Also tried
response[0][0]['city']
And a couple of other permutations of the same code.
How can I get the value 'Northfield' out of the JSON data?

Answer 1

You're almost there, just use results instead of result on the result of JSON.parse(response) instead of on response:
JSON.parse(response)["results"][0]["city"]
#=> "Northfield"

Answer 2

JSON parse will create a hash then you can target the results which is an array of hashes, like so:
hash = JSON.parse(response)
hash['results'].select{|h| h['city'] == 'Northfield'}
Or if you only care about the results:
array = JSON.parse(response)['results']
array.select{|a| a['city' == 'Northfield'} #
To get just a single data point from the data, you might select one item in the array and then the key of the value you want:
array[0]['city']
For all the cities
cities = array.map{|k,v| k['city']}

Answer 3

You have a typo error, instead of response['result'] you can use it like response[:results].
And if you want to get the value of city key from all the hash, then response['result'][0]['city'] will not work.
After parsing response you will get an array of hashes, i.e
[{:zip=>"08225", :city=>"Northfield", :county=>"Atlantic", :state=>"NJ", :distance=>"0.0"}, {:zip=>"08221", :city=>"Linwood", :county=>"Atlantic", :state=>"NJ", :distance=>"1.8"}]
And if you want to fetch the values of key city from all the hash then you can try this steps
response[:results].map{|x| x[:city]}
which will give the result
["Atlantic", "Atlantic"]