I just came across this post again via a Google search when looking to solve exactly the same issue. On the basis that others might too, I wanted to add to it some ruby code that might be useful for others doing this, that will combine the elements of an array into a single string:
ruby {
code => 'event["hashtags_array"] = event["[entities][hashtags]"].collect { |m| m["text"] } unless event["[entities][hashtags]"].nil?
event["hashtags_list"] = event["hashtags_array"].join(",") unless event["[hashtags_array]"].nil?'
}
The first line is just as @jordansissel provided me above; the second line is a hack together that I figured out but seems to work. Example input:
"entities": {
"hashtags": [
{
"text": "Iran",
"indices": [
18,
23
]
},
{
"text": "News",
"indices": [
24,
29
]
}
],
Example output:
"hashtags_array" => [
[0] "Iran",
[1] "News"
],
"hashtags_list" => "Iran,News",