Ruby hashes and "try"

try method is an Object extension from ActiveSupport. It's useful in some cases (ie. chained calls). It's usually used to call a method on an object if it exists, or return nil if it doesn’t, rather than raising an exception (NoMethodError):

>> object.try(:nonexistent_method)
=> nil

Usage with hashes is less intuitive:

>> hash = { a: 1, b: 2 }
=> {:a=>1, :b=>2}
>> hash.try(:a)
=> nil
>> hash.try(:[], :a)
=> 1