Can't save a Rails 4.2 array in Postgres array column

Question

I'm trying to save an array of terms on each Dictionary model (I want to be able to search tags basically). So terms=["apple", "pear", "fruit"] could be one example of a term array I'm trying to save on each instance of a Dictionary model. Previously, terms was a serialized text column. I then changed it to try and take advantage of the Postgres array datatype as follows. When I try to update a model (e.g., dictionary_example1.terms = ["fruit", "pineapple"] followed by a call to save), all that is stored is an empty array []. What am I doing wrong?

Model.rb

class Dictionary < ActiveRecord::Base
  serialize :terms, Array

end

schema.rb

create_table "clinical_trials", force: :cascade do |t|
    t.string   "terms",             array: true
  end

migration

class ChangeTermsToArray < ActiveRecord::Migration
    def change
      change_column :dictionaries, :terms, "varchar[] USING (string_to_array(terms, ','))"
  end
end

Thanks, removing the "serialize" from the model did the trick. — Nona
– Nona, Commented Mar 30, 2015 at 23:33

Semjon · Accepted Answer · 2016-01-01 23:16:34Z

1

serialize in ActiveRecord is used for serialization of ruby objects into string in order to persist ruby object in database. The most popular is YAML serializer. Rails 4 has a builtin support of Postgresql arrays since 4.0, so we do not need to set string serializer for array attribute in model.

answered Jan 1, 2016 at 23:16

Semjon

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