# Retrieving Global Arrays

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/retrieving-global-arrays/158298>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [January 21, 2009, 8:07pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/retrieving-global-arrays/158298 "2009-01-21T20:07:57Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Sav](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/65b543/32.png) [@Sav](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Sav)\
**Post date:** [January 21, 2009, 8:07pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/retrieving-global-arrays/158298/1 "2009-01-21T20:07:57Z")

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I inherited an app that created STATES & COUNTRIES as global hashes in  
config/environment.rb

STATES = {}  
STATES[:AL] = ‘Alabama’  
STATES[:AK] = ‘Alaska’  
STATES[:AZ] = ‘Arizona’  
…

I’m able to render the name correctly like this…  
\<%= STATES[:AK] %\>

But what is the syntax to call that dynamically? This does not  
work…  
\<%= STATES[location.state] %\>

Thanks, I’m stumped on this noob issue.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Sav](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/65b543/32.png) [@Sav](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Sav)\
**Post date:** [January 21, 2009, 8:10pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/retrieving-global-arrays/158298/2 "2009-01-21T20:10:21Z")

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\<%= STATES[location.state.to\_sym] %\> ?

- 

Maurício Linhares  
[http://alinhavado.wordpress.com/](http://alinhavado.wordpress.com/) (pt-br) | [http://blog.codevader.com/](http://blog.codevader.com/)  
(en)