Just yesterday I wrote about Enumerable and some of its all-stars. Well, here’s another baller: inject. It took me a bit to truly grok and appreciate this method, but once I did it really cleaned up my code and mind. Zen-like.

Injecting the Comic Book Example

Previously I wanted to find all objects in an array with an item_type equal to Comic (as opposed to Poems).

Here was my first stab:

books  = Book.find(:all, :order => 'id desc', :limit => 20)
comics = []
books.each do |book|
  comics << book if book.item_type == 'Comic'
end

I cleaned this up with select, but here’s how someone might accomplish this task using inject:

books  = Book.find(:all, :order => 'id desc', :limit => 20)
comics = books.inject([]) do |array, book|
  if book.item_type == 'Comic' 
    array + [book]
  else 
    array
  end
end

This code’ll give me a new array, comics, consisting only of Book objects whose item_type is Comic. How?

In Ruby

As the Apple Rails page says, “The inject method is a Ruby idiom for accumulating while stepping through a collection of objects.” Correct. Here’s how I’d write inject:

# inject's parameter is optional, but let's keep things simple
def inject(target)
  each do |element|
    target = yield(target, element)
  end
  target
end

You pass inject a target and a block. The block is passed two elements: the target (which you are injecting) and the current element in your collection. The target is replaced each step of the way by what the block returns as it iterates over your collection. What you’re left with is a beefed up, injected target.

Summing Numbers

The canonical inject example seems to be summing up a range of numbers. Not one to break convention, here you go:

>> (0..10).inject(0) { |sum, number| sum + number }
=> 55

For fun and profit, concoct your very own sum method:

module Enumerable
  def sum
    inject { |sum, number| sum + number }
  end
end  

>> (0..10).sum
=> 55
>> [1,2,3,4].sum
=> 10

If you don’t pass it a parameter, inject will fill its target with the first element of the collection, skipping that element.

Hey, that factorial function everyone’s always throwing around? Trivial.

def factorial(x)
  return 1 if x.zero?
  (1..x).inject { |a, b| a * b }
end

Even and Odd

Here’s another example: we want all the even numbers from 0 to 10:

evens = (0..10).inject([]) do |array, number|
  if number % 2 == 0
    array + [number]
  else
    array
  end
end

Again, our array local variable gets replaced each step of the way by the result of the block. If it’s not an even number, we just return the array as it stands. Be warned: if we returned nil inside of the block we’d run into problems as within the next iteration array would be nil.

Hashes, too

All this haxin’ makes me hungry. I need to find places to eat that aren’t any more than 10 minutes away. Because inject is a method on Enumerable, we can use it with hashes as well:

>> distance_of_food = {
  :pizza => 10, :thai => 21, :indian => 11, :mexican => 9, 
  :burgers => 15 
}
=> {:pizza=>10, :thai=>21, :indian=>11, :mexican=>9, :burgers=>15}
>> distance_of_food.inject({}) do |hash, (place, distance)|
  key = distance <= 10 ? :near : :far
  hash[key] ||= []
  hash[key] << place
  hash
end
=> {:near=>[:pizza, :mexican], :far=>[:thai, :indian, :burgers]}

Remember to always end the block with the new value of your target (hash in this case) and also make sure to break out the key and value parameters with parenthesis in your block if iterating over a hash.

Instance Variables to_hash

Want to get a hash of instance variables from an object you’re coding? inject makes it easy:

class Restaurant
  def initialize(type, minutes_away)
    @type, @minutes_away = type, minutes_away
  end

  def to_hash
    instance_variables.inject({}) do |hash, ivar|
      hash.merge(ivar.gsub('@','') => instance_variable_get(ivar))
    end
  end
end

>> cybelles_pizza = Restaurant.new('pizza', 10)
=> #<Restaurant:0x4d56c0 @minutes_away=10, @type="pizza">
>> cybelles_pizza.to_hash
=> {"type"=>"pizza", "minutes_away"=>10}

Glorious.

A More Complex Example

This one uses some Rails code, group_by. If you’re unfamiliar you can get the scoop in this post.

comments = Comment.find(:all, :order => 'id desc', :limit => 30)
comments.group_by(&:item_type).inject({}) do |hash, (type, items)|
  hash.merge(type => type.constantize.find(items.map(&:item_id)))
end

What we end up with is a hash keyed by item_type with each member containing an array of items which correspond to that item_type. Not so bad.

injecting

Here’s a little tidbit Ezra was cool enough to share with me: injecting. Try it out:

module Enumerable
  def injecting(s)
    inject(s) do |k, i|
      yield(k, i); k
    end
  end
end  

As he explains, here’s one way to collect a hash:

>> [1,2,3,4,5].inject({}) {|m, el| m[el] = el; m }
=> {5=>5, 1=>1, 2=>2, 3=>3, 4=>4}

With injecting you needn’t worry about explicitly returning the target—it’s done for you:

>> [1,2,3,4,5].injecting({}) {|m, el| m[el] = el }
=> {5=>5, 1=>1, 2=>2, 3=>3, 4=>4}

Pretty handy. (By the way, why m? Because the target I keep referring to is commonly known as the memo. Take note.)

Finally, const_grabbin’

One last thing to share. This is pretty neat, from Dave Thomas’ annotate_models plugin:

class_name.split('::').inject(Object) do |klass, part|
  klass.const_get(part) 
end

This code is turning a string like Blogs::Grinder into a constant. Think about it. Real slick.

More More More

For more uses of inject, check the ever handy RDoc. Gregory Brown blogged about it on the O’Reilly blog back in July, and then there’s the minimal ruby+inject tag on delicious (which could use some love). Check that page and you’ll see that, as always, Projectionist does not disappoint.

Got any more crazy uses of inject? Hit me up. Pastie for best results. Thanks, yes.

Update: Greggory Bluvshteyn teaches me maths and fixes my factorial method.