Weirdness when save symbols to AR string fields

Rails
#1

I have a model foo with two fields: id and string. When I try to save a
symbol into that string field I get weird results:

foo = Foo.new(:string => :foobar)
foo.string
=> :foobar

foo.save
foo.string
=> :foobar

foo = Foo.find(foo.id)
=> #<Foo:0x467282c @attributes={“id”=>5, “string”=>"— :foobar\n"}>

foo.string
=> “— :foobar\n”

Apparently the database save is converting the symbol into YAML. But I
don’t know why and I can’t seem to unmarshal it. Any idea what’s going
on?

Thanks!

/adam

#2

On 1/20/07, Adam B. [email protected] wrote:

foo = Foo.find(foo.id)
=> #<Foo:0x467282c @attributes={“id”=>5, “string”=>"— :foobar\n"}>

foo.string
=> “— :foobar\n”

Apparently the database save is converting the symbol into YAML. But I
don’t know why and I can’t seem to unmarshal it. Any idea what’s going
on?

Yea, it serializes non-db fields to yaml. Use the serialize method to
unserialize it for you.

http://rails.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveRecord/Base.html#M001004

–
Rick O.
http://weblog.techno-weenie.net
http://mephistoblog.com