# ActiveRecord Type issue -- What am I missing?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/activerecord-type-issue-what-am-i-missing/107893>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [June 27, 2007, 6:27am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/activerecord-type-issue-what-am-i-missing/107893 "2007-06-27T06:27:14Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![DFJosh](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/94ad74/32.png) [@DFJosh](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/DFJosh)\
**Post date:** [June 27, 2007, 6:27am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/activerecord-type-issue-what-am-i-missing/107893/1 "2007-06-27T06:27:14Z")

</div>

Hey everyone,

First, apologies for the crosspost, I meant to post this to this  
group, my previous post was a mistake.

I’m having a frustrating ActiveRecord issue. Maybe what I’m trying to  
do will not work, but if that’s the case, I’d like to know why.  
Otherwise I’d love to know what I’m doing wrong.

My goal is to store prices (numbers with exactly two decimal places,  
always) in the db as INTs to save space and avoid precision errors.  
I’ve done this in PHP with no problem – just store the actual value  
\*  
100, and always divide by 100 when reading from the db. Should be  
simple…

I set up a callback based on the “Encrypter” example in the excellent  
Agile Web Dev w/ rails book. Callback is as follows:

def after\_save(model)  
@attrs\_to\_manage.each do |attr|  
res = model[attr[0]].to\_f / (10.0\*\*attr[1])  
model[attr[0]] = res  
RAILS\_DEFAULT\_LOGGER.info " Result: #{model[attr[0]].inspect}  
(class=#{model[attr[0]].class}, model=#{model.inspect})"  
end  
end

I tried that thinking I was all set. I am puzzled by the result. The  
number I expected to see was 12.34. Instead I saw just 12. The log  
showed:

FixedDbNum: int to float for `price`: 1234 / (10\*\*2) = 12.34  
Result: 12 (class=Fixnum, model=#\<Service:0xb6931500  
@attributes={“reference”=\>“7000”, “modified\_at”=\>nil,  
“billing\_frequency”=\>“1”, “price”=\>12.34,  
“billing\_frequency\_unit”=\>"", “id”=\>“1”, “setup\_fee”=\>“9”,  
“user\_id”=\>“1”, “created\_at”=\>“2007-05-19 11:43:57”,  
“service\_name”=\>“Test”}\>)  
Rendering within layouts/timesheet

I am stumped. Somehow the attribute refuses to become a Float and  
remains as a Fixnum… yet it shows properly in the attributes list.

Did I make some silly mistake or is something else going on here?

TIA.

-Josh