Order Hash and delete first key-value pair

Question

I have a Hash with timestamp as keys.

hash = {
  "2016-05-31T22:30:58+02:00" => {
          "path" => "/",
        "method" => "GET"
  },
  "2016-05-31T22:31:23+02:00" => {
          "path" => "/tour",
        "method" => "GET"
  },
  "2016-05-31T22:31:05+02:00" => {
          "path" => "/contact_us",
        "method" => "GET"
  }
}

I order the collection and get the first pair like this:

hash.sort_by {|k, _| k}.first.first

But how do I remove it?

The delete method requires you to know the exakt spelling of the key. Of course I could return the key and then use it in the delete method, but I was thinking if there was any more straight forward way?

Answer 1

The method you are looking for is hash.keys it returns an array of the keys:

hash.delete(hash.keys.min)

EDIT: I've updated the answer to reflect that keys must be sorted first, this has been added in the original question and brought up by @Shadwell in comments to this post.

I replaced hash.keys.sort.first for hash.keys.min as suggested by @Cary Swoveland, it is not only more performant but better semantically.