Rails - Jan 2007 - are serialized fields required?

When I specify that a field is serialized in the model, but create an
object of that model without the (optional) serialized field, I run
into problems that seem to indicate serialized fields are required. It
seems to be taking the nil value of the field and trying to unserialize
it, unsuccessfully.

So, in my model:
class Person < ActiveRecord::Base
  serialize :research_discipline, Array

When I do this:
member = Member.new     # Member subclasses Person
assert !member.valid?

I get:
ActiveRecord::SerializationTypeMismatch: research_discipline was
supposed to be a Array, but was a NilClass

So can I have an optional serialized field?

Thanks, 
Julia


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Well I haven''t gotten a reply, but I did find this relevant patch,
which was submitted a few days ago:
http://dev.rubyonrails.org/ticket/7293

Julia

On Jan 23, 4:37 pm, "julia...-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org"
<julia...-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
> When I specify that a field is serialized in the model, but create an
> object of that model without the (optional) serialized field, I run
> into problems that seem to indicate serialized fields are required. It
> seems to be taking the nil value of the field and trying to unserialize
> it, unsuccessfully.
>
> So, in my model:
> class Person < ActiveRecord::Base
>   serialize :research_discipline, Array
>
> When I do this:
> member = Member.new     # Member subclasses Person
> assert !member.valid?
>
> I get:
> ActiveRecord::SerializationTypeMismatch: research_discipline was
> supposed to be a Array, but was a NilClass
> 
> So can I have an optional serialized field?
> 
> Thanks,
> Julia

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