Use the YAML module:
http://ruby-doc.org/stdlib-1.9.3/libdoc/yaml/rdoc/YAML.html
node = YAML::parse( <<EOY )
one: 1
two: 2
EOY
puts node.type_id
# prints: map
p node.value[ one ]
# prints key and value nodes:
# [ #<YAML::YamlNode:0x8220278 @type_id="str", @value="one", @kind="scalar">,
# #<YAML::YamlNode:0x821fcd8 @type_id="int", @value="1", @kind="scalar"> ]
# Mappings can also be accessed for just the value by accessing as a Hash directly
p node[ one ]
# prints: #<YAML::YamlNode:0x821fcd8 @type_id="int", @value="1", @kind="scalar">
rel=“noreferer” http://yaml4r.sourceforge.net/doc/page/parsing_yaml_documents.htm