Posted by Vince Wadhwani on Apr 09, 2008

Ok, so you already know that you can convert strings to other types of objects using Ruby's powerful tools. "3".to_i will give you an integer (3) while "3".to_f will give you a float. But if you want to convert a string to a variable? For instance if you're sending a call to your model and want to dynamically generate a variable? I wish it were as simple as "myvariable".to_var but it's not...

In this case we'll have to use instance_variable_set to do the trick:

instance_variable_set("@foo", my_value)

Or, to dynamically create that variable name instead of using foo, just do: 

instance_variable_set("@#{my_var}", my_value)

Maybe one day we'll be able to just do myvar.to_var but until then, the above should work.