gistfile1.rb

# I have a hash `dates` that I get from "DateTime.now - 7, DateTime.now" in my database.
# I need to turn it into a full week where if the date doesn't exist put a 0 in as the value of the date key.

dates = {"2014-01-15"=>1, "2014-01-17"=>1, "2014-01-18"=>1, "2014-01-19"=>17}

week_hash = {
  "2014-01-13"=>0, 
  "2014-01-14"=>0,
  "2014-01-15"=>1, 
  "2014-01-16"=>0,
  "2014-01-17"=>1, 
  "2014-01-18"=>1, 
  "2014-01-19"=>17
  }

Looks good! Yeah, needing to serialize that data into a JSON object is definitely a different story. One quick thing: you're generating two equivalent dates two different ways at two different times. If your database connection stalls for a few seconds, you could accidentally end up with mismatched results. Just generate your date once, like

week_ago = Date.today - 7

so you don't end up with time mismatches. The deprecation warnings are because that's the old Rails 3.x syntax for .count. Look into the .group and .order methods instead.

Thanks dood! @piersadrian