This gem extends various classes to provide a simple and intuitive to_bool operator that tends to Do What You Mean when retrieving a value from an ENV var or from an HTTP request and treating it as a boolean.

For example:

false, "false", "f", "no", "n", "0", "", and nil are all considered false whereas true, "true", "t", "yes", "y", "1", etc are all considered true.

Instances of FalseClass and TrueClass remain the same, and Fixnum is overridden such that 0 is considered false but all other values are considered true.

See the (very very short) source code for exact details.

Install the gem:

gem install to_bool

Or if you're using bundler, add this line to your Gemfile and run bundle install:

gem 'to_bool'

From there, any object should respond to .to_bool in a meaningful way.