In daily development the parameters passed to the action in the Controller when implementing business logic will be placed in the params object. generally we can access with

params[:token] #=> token_value
#or
params["token"] #=> token_value

You will find that the value of key in params can be access by using Symbol or String.

Is it a bit magical?

In fact the principle is very simple params have the characteristics extend from HashWithIndifferentAccess

class HashWithIndifferentAccess < Hash
  #......
    def []=(key, value)
        regular_writer(convert_key(key), convert_value(value, for: :assignment))
    end

    # key point 
    def convert_key(key) 
       key.kind_of?(Symbol) ? key.to_s : key
    end

    def self.[](*args)
        new.merge!(Hash[*args])
    end
end

Through the above source code analysis, it can be seen that for a HashWithIndifferentAccess object, when assigning it key is uniformly converted into String type (covert_key method).

When a value is to be taken, the key of the Symbol will be forced to be converted to String so that the user can use Symbol ** or **String to take the same value.

Hope it can hlep you :)