Rails 6 adds support of symbol keys

Rails 6 added support of symbol keys with ActiveSupport::HashWithIndifferentAccess#assoc.

Please note that documentation of ActiveSupport::HashWithIndifferentAccess#assoc in Rails 5.2 shows that ActiveSupport::HashWithIndifferentAccess#assoc works with symbol keys but it doesn't.

In Rails 6, ActiveSupport::HashWithIndifferentAccess implements a hash where string and symbol keys are considered to be the same.

Before Rails 6, HashWithIndifferentAccess#assoc used to work with just string keys.

Let's checkout how it works.

Rails 5.2

Let's create an object of ActiveSupport::HashWithIndifferentAccess and call assoc on that object.

>> info = { name: 'Mark', email: '[email protected]' }.with_indifferent_access

=> {"name"=>"Mark", "email"=>"[email protected]"}

>> info.assoc(:name)

=> nil

>> info.assoc('name')

=> ["name", "Mark"]

We can see that assoc does not work with symbol keys with ActiveSupport::HashWithIndifferentAccess in Rails 5.2.

Rails 6.0.0.beta2

Now, let's call assoc on the same hash in Rails 6 with both string and symbol keys.

>> info = { name: 'Mark', email: '[email protected]' }.with_indifferent_access

=> {"name"=>"Mark", "email"=>"[email protected]"}

>> info.assoc(:name)

=> ["name", "Mark"]

>> info.assoc('name')

=> ["name", "Mark"]

As we can see, assoc works perfectly fine with both string and symbol keys with ActiveSupport::HashWithIndifferentAccess in Rails 6.

Here is the relevant pull request.