Ruby double splat (**) operator cheatsheet

The operator ** is useful as an options hash.

def one_method(**options);end

This form is completely similar to the following:

def another_method(options = {});end

In addition, you can strictly define the set of required keys for the method.

def one_strict_method(first_name:, last_name: , **options)
  puts "options: #{options}"
  greeting = "Hello #{first_name} #{last_name}"
  puts options[:upcase] ? greeting.upcase : greeting
end

pry(main)> one_strict_method(upcase: true)
ArgumentError: missing keywords: first_name, last_name

pry(main)> one_strict_method(first_name: 'John', last_name: 'Doe', upcase: true)
options: {:upcase=>true}
HELLO JOHN DOE
=> nil

Another advantage of double splat literal is that it works like #merge for Ruby Hash

class Contact::ShowRepresenter #:nodoc:
  def call(contact)
    {
      contact: {
        **base_info(contact),
        **legal_info(contact),
        # You can add something more complex here.
        # **GeoLocaionRepresenter.new.(contact)
      }
    }
  end

  private

  def base_info(contact)
    {
      id: contact.id,
      first_name: contact.first_name,
      last_name: contact.last_name,
      email: contact.email,
      phone: contact.phone
    }
  end

  def legal_info(contact)
    {
      legal_name: contact.legal_name,
      legal_type: contact.legal_type,
      mailing_address: contact.mailing_address
    }
  end
end

pry(main)>Contact::ShowRepresenter.new.(Contact.last)
=> {
  :contact=>{
    :id=>51986,
    :first_name=>"Ilia",
    :last_name=>"Kriachkov",
    :email=>"[e-mail]",
    :phone=>"[phone]",
    :legal_name=>"JetRockets",
    :legal_type=>"LLC",
    :mailing_address=>"15 Let Oktyabrya Street, #10b, Tver, Russian Federation 170008"
  }
}

In conclusion, I want to demonstrate some benchmark results.

As you can see, the ** operator is a bit faster than Hash#merge.

require 'benchmark'
n = 50_000
Benchmark.bm(2) do |x|
  x.report('merge:             ') { n.times { merge } }
  x.report('double_splat_merge:') { n.times { double_splat_merge } }
end

def merge
  hash = { a: 'a' }
  { b: 'b' }.merge(hash)
end

def double_splat_merge
  hash = { a: 'a' }
  { b: 'b', **hash }
end

                     user      system      total        real
merge:               0.109247   0.088652   0.197899 (  0.204470)
double_splat_merge:  0.079480   0.003590   0.083070 (  0.083642)

Comments

[Francisco Quintero 🇨🇴]

Great article, thanks for sharing!