Hoodoo Guides: Utilities

Purpose

Hoodoo includes a grab-bag of utility methods used internally to keep its footprint, including external dependencies, to a minimum. These methods are part of the public API and covered by RDoc. This Guide lists the facilities available in groups, making them easier to discover.

It is generally recommended that service authors use Hoodoo utility methods where possible to help ensure consistent behaviour across the system.

Hashes

Creation

• collated_hash_from – build a Hash from an Array, allowing duplicate entries
• deep_dup – duplicate a Hash and any nested Hashes
• stringify – convert keys to Strings
• symbolize – convert keys to Symbols

Modification

• deep_merge_into – merge one Hash into another, including any nested Hashes

Comparison and access

• hash_diff – compare two Hashes
• hash_key_paths – extract the key paths for a Hash and any nested Hashes into a flat Array

Date and time

Conversion

• nanosecond_iso8601 – consistent rendering of a Time or DateTime with nanosecond precision
• rationalise_datetime – convert various forms of input representation into a DateTime instance

Validation

• valid_iso8601_subset_date? – see if a String describing a date conforms to the Hoodoo ISO 8601 subset
• valid_iso8601_subset_datetime? – see if a String describing a date and time conforms to the Hoodoo ISO 8601 subset

Miscellaneous

• spare_port – find a spare TCP port on localhost
• to_integer? – check to see if an input quantity will convert to an Integer without loss or ignored characters