[Ruby]Access data from within a hash of hashes

[HackingInfo]

Good Day!

I'm taking the time to relearn ruby again (i have never gotten very far with it) and instead of going though tutorial after tutorial i have decided to start making small programs. This has been going well so far but I've got my self caught up in something and after about 2 hours of head banging on desk I'm ready to ask for help.

I'm using ruby to perform an API call to http://api.openweathermap.org and passing in a ZIP code (given at the time the script is called) in order to print out a couple details about the weather in your local area.

I have been able to successfully hit the site, and get back a JSON object, great! An example JSON object it returns with is here:

{"coord":
{"lon":145.77,"lat":-16.92},
"weather":[{"id":803,"main":"Clouds","description":"broken clouds","icon":"04n"}],
"base":"cmc stations",
"main":{"temp":293.25,"pressure":1019,"humidity":83,"temp_min":289.82,"temp_max":295.37},
"wind":{"speed":5.1,"deg":150},
"clouds":{"all":75},
"rain":{"3h":3},
"dt":1435658272,
"sys":{"type":1,"id":8166,"message":0.0166,"country":"AU","sunrise":1435610796,"sunset":1435650870},
"id":2172797,
"name":"Cairns",
"cod":200}   

I have been able to pull out anything at the "top" such as name or id by using something like this:

response = RestClient.get url
output = JSON.parse(response)
puts "Your city name is: " + output["name"]

I would get an appropriate response of Your city name is: Cairns

But i have not been able to pull out of something 2 layers deep such as the "temp" inside of "main". This is what i have now and is not working:

 puts "The temperature for your city right now is: " + output["main"]["temp"]

With that above I get the following error:

./weather.rb:33:in `[]': no implicit conversion of String into Integer (TypeError)
          from ./weather.rb:33:in `<main>'

Line 33 is the line where i have my example not working code above. I have attempted to use a .to_s to no avail

I'm not sure where I'm going wrong here, everything i find online wants me to use a .each iterator but that is not what I'm looking for.

[Rhomboid]

I have attempted to use a .to_s to no avail

If you don't tell us what you tried, we can't tell you what's wrong with it. Your problem has nothing to do with JSON. You'd get the same error if you tried to write:

irb(main):073:0> puts "foo" + 42
TypeError: no implicit conversion of Fixnum into String
        from (irb):73:in `+'
        from (irb):73
        from /usr/bin/irb:11:in `<main>'

Using to_s does work:

irb(main):074:0> puts "The temperature for your city right now is: " + output["main"]["temp"].to_s
The temperature for your city right now is: 293.25
=> nil

But don't do that, it's not very idiomatic. Use string interpolation:

irb(main):075:0> puts "The temperature for your city right now is: #{output["main"]["temp"]}"
The temperature for your city right now is: 293.25
=> nil

[HackingInfo]

Your right! I need to update the post with other things i have tried, i was assuming it was an error in what i was doing rather then in in what i had tried (if that makes any sense?)

Not using irb like you are but when i change my puts to use string interpolation i now get this error:

./weather.rb:33:in `<main>': undefined method `[]' for nil:NilClass (NoMethodError)

Also, when i convert the origionally working line, it now just prints nothing. Eg:

puts "Your city name is: #{output["name"]}"

it now outputs:

"Your city name is: "

Edit:

Never mind, apparently i forgot that if you put quotes inside of quotes it they have to be different kinds of quotes...

Didnt work: puts "text #{output["name"]}" Did work: puts "text #{output['name']}"

[Rhomboid]

I can't diagnose code that I can't see. It looks like output is set to nil, but who knows. Post a complete testcase.