Loading & Dumping of data in AR with Marshal

Rails
1

Hey,

I’m writing an application that stores models attributes in a single
column called data, using Marshal. My ultimate goal is to allow any/
all records to be saved in one database table. I’m wondering if
there’s a better way to do this, and also if I should Base64 encode
the result of Marshal.dump as mentioned here:
http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/164786#723805

Here’s my current code:

Post(id: integer, data: text, type: string, created_at: datetime,

updated_at: datetime)
class Content < ActiveRecord::Base
private
def unmarshal
Marshal.load(self.data)
end
end

class Post < Content
before_save :marshal

def title
unmarshal[:title]
end

def title=(value)
@title = value
end

private
def marshal
self.data = Marshal.dump({ :title => self.title })
end
end

Thanks for any tips/help!

2

On Oct 9, 5:50 am, Mat H. [email protected] wrote:

Hey,

I’m writing an application that stores models attributes in a single
column called data, using Marshal. My ultimate goal is to allow any/
all records to be saved in one database table. I’m wondering if
there’s a better way to do this, and also if I should Base64 encode
the result of Marshal.dump as mentioned here:How to save Ruby object as a blob in MySQL - Ruby - Ruby-Forum

This design is well on it’s way to ending up on TheDailyWTF. Several
things:

  • using Marshal is a bad, bad, bad idea. The format is fragile when
    class definitions are changed and not guaranteed to be readable across
    Ruby versions. It’s also completely incomprehensible to anything
    besides Ruby.

  • you’re re-implementing the idea of serialized fields (check the
    ActiveRecord docs) using Marshal instead of YAML.

  • you’re trying to jam all the data into one table. This is almost
    certainly wrong.

If your data set is REALLY as unstructured as you’re implying, you may
want to look at some of the schemaless document DB stuff (CouchDB and
friends).

–Matt J.