Convert string to symbol-able in ruby

Rails got ActiveSupport::CoreExtensions::String::Inflections module that provides such methods. They're all worth looking at. For your example:

'Book Author Title'.parameterize.underscore.to_sym # :book_author_title

from: http://ruby-doc.org/core/classes/String.html#M000809

str.intern => symbol
str.to_sym => symbol

Returns the Symbol corresponding to str, creating the symbol if it did not previously exist. See Symbol#id2name.

"Koala".intern         #=> :Koala
s = 'cat'.to_sym       #=> :cat
s == :cat              #=> true
s = '@cat'.to_sym      #=> :@cat
s == :@cat             #=> true

This can also be used to create symbols that cannot be represented using the :xxx notation.

'cat and dog'.to_sym   #=> :"cat and dog"

But for your example ...

"Book Author Title".gsub(/\s+/, "_").downcase.to_sym

should go ;)

"Book Author Title".parameterize('_').to_sym
=> :book_author_title

http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveSupport/Inflector.html#method-i-parameterize

parameterize is a rails method, and it lets you choose what you want the separator to be. It is a dash "-" by default.