Using ActiveRecord serialize with Hash not working?

Question

I've been reading up on the use of serialize from ActiveRecord, and I thought I understood how to use it, but my attempts are failing so I'm not sure if what I want is even possible this way? What I want is to store a simple hash linking id's of objects called accruals to a number of days. For example {"1" => "12", "5" => "24"}. I set this up as follows:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
      serialize :accrual_days, Hash
end

And for the database

def self.up
    unless column_exists? :users, :accrual_days
        add_column :users, :accrual_days, :text
    end
end

I then went into the rails console, and inputted these commands:

User.find(1).accrual_days

=> nil

User.find(1).accrual_days = {"1"=>"12"}

=> {"1"=>"12"}

User.find(1).accrual_days

=> nil

It seems like the accrual_days are being set, but then it doesn't persist. I tried saving the user after setting the accrual day, and storing it as string instead of text in the database, but the problem persists. What am I doing wrong?

rwilliams · Accepted Answer · 2011-12-13 21:28:57Z

4

You're not saving the values in the database.

Try

user = User.find(1)

user.accrual_days = {"1"=>"12"}

user.save

User.find(1).accrual_days

edited Dec 13, 2011 at 21:28

answered Sep 25, 2011 at 3:13

rwilliams

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1 Comment

Alexei Over a year ago

Thanks, I know I posted this a long time ago but better to accept an answer late than never!

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