 <p>One of the things I like most about Javascript is the way you can access the properties of an object with <code>object.property</code> as well as <code>object["property"]</code>. In Ruby you can only access the value of a hash with <code>hash["value"]</code>.</p> <p>To answer your question, you will need to find a way of converting <code>list_key</code> and <code>name_key</code> so that it works in Ruby. The best way to do that depends on how you're handling the parsing of the JSON in the first place but I it should be as simple as splitting <code>list_key</code> and <code>name_key</code> up into an array of stings and then accessing those values on the hash.</p> <p>Hope that helps.</p>