Banging my head about this one today and I can''t find any information on this in the API... I have two models... User and PersonRecord. PersonRecord is a model that is shared among several applications and hooked into a completely different database. It contains the personal information about a user. The User model simply contains a username column. These models work together via a belongs_to relationship. u = User.find 1 u.person_record.last_name => "Hogan" Let''s say I have 200 users... I would hate to have to run 200 queries to the second database to grab the other data, so my thought was "Hey, I''ll just serialize that data onto my object and periodically synchronize the data." class User < ActiveRecord::Base serialize :person_record_data, PersonRecord ... more stuff end u.person_record_data = u.person_record u.save That all works just great... except when I try to get the record back, person_record_data is nil. I can serialize hashes, arrays, etc just fine... but I can''t seem to serialize ActiveRecord objects... is this a limitation? a bug? Thanks in advance to anyone who can help me out. The documentation on what is allowed is pretty vague. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby on Rails: Talk" group. To post to this group, send email to rubyonrails-talk-/JYPxA39Uh5TLH3MbocFFw@public.gmane.org To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rubyonrails-talk-unsubscribe-/JYPxA39Uh5TLH3MbocFFw@public.gmane.org For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
I ran into a very similar problem a while back. Eventually, my solution was to remove the call to ''serialize'' from the model and add the following two methods... def value self[:value] ? Marshal.load(self[:value]) : nil end def value=(x) self[:value] = Marshal.dump(x) end Where ''value'' is the name of the column in the database where the serialized data is to be stored, which would be ''person_record_data'' in your case. Replacing Marshal with YAML (i.e. YAML.load, YAML.dump) in the above methods may be equally or more suitable in some scenarios. It seems that AR''s ''serialize'' function tries to do a bunch of extra magic, which makes it behave unexpectedly when one is trying to do what we are. Personally, I wish it would knock off the magic, and just do what it says it does... serialize. ;-) Brian Hogan wrote:> Banging my head about this one today and I can''t find any information on > this in the API... > > I have two models... User and PersonRecord. PersonRecord is a model that is > shared among several applications and hooked into a completely different > database. It contains the personal information about a user. The User model > simply contains a username column. These models work together via a > belongs_to relationship. > > u = User.find 1 > u.person_record.last_name > => "Hogan" > > Let''s say I have 200 users... I would hate to have to run 200 queries to the > second database to grab the other data, so my thought was "Hey, I''ll just > serialize that data onto my object and periodically synchronize the data." > > class User < ActiveRecord::Base > serialize :person_record_data, PersonRecord > ... more stuff > end > > u.person_record_data = u.person_record > u.save > > That all works just great... except when I try to get the record back, > person_record_data is nil. > > I can serialize hashes, arrays, etc just fine... but I can''t seem to > serialize ActiveRecord objects... is this a limitation? a bug? > > Thanks in advance to anyone who can help me out. The documentation on what > is allowed is pretty vague. > > > > >--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby on Rails: Talk" group. To post to this group, send email to rubyonrails-talk-/JYPxA39Uh5TLH3MbocFFw@public.gmane.org To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rubyonrails-talk-unsubscribe-/JYPxA39Uh5TLH3MbocFFw@public.gmane.org For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
Jon:
Interesting... I arrived at a very similar solution using serialize...
instead of storing the object itself, I simply stored the attributes in that
field and wrote the getter myself.
#callback that stores the data on create
def sync_with_remote_person_data
self.person_record_data = self.person_record.attributes
self.save
end
def person_record_data
PersonRecord.new(self.attributes["person_record_data"])
end
But I think I like your way better as seems much cleaner. Thanks much!
On 3/19/07, Jon Garvin
<jgarvin.lists-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>
wrote:>
>
> I ran into a very similar problem a while back. Eventually, my
> solution was to remove the call to ''serialize'' from the
model and add
> the following two methods...
>
> def value
> self[:value] ? Marshal.load(self[:value]) : nil
> end
>
> def value=(x)
> self[:value] = Marshal.dump(x)
> end
>
> Where ''value'' is the name of the column in the database
where the
> serialized data is to be stored, which would be
''person_record_data'' in
> your case. Replacing Marshal with YAML (i.e. YAML.load, YAML.dump) in
> the above methods may be equally or more suitable in some scenarios.
>
> It seems that AR''s ''serialize'' function tries to
do a bunch of extra
> magic, which makes it behave unexpectedly when one is trying to do what
> we are. Personally, I wish it would knock off the magic, and just do
> what it says it does... serialize. ;-)
>
> Brian Hogan wrote:
> > Banging my head about this one today and I can''t find any
information on
> > this in the API...
> >
> > I have two models... User and PersonRecord. PersonRecord is a model
> that is
> > shared among several applications and hooked into a completely
different
> > database. It contains the personal information about a user. The User
> model
> > simply contains a username column. These models work together via a
> > belongs_to relationship.
> >
> > u = User.find 1
> > u.person_record.last_name
> > => "Hogan"
> >
> > Let''s say I have 200 users... I would hate to have to run 200
queries to
> the
> > second database to grab the other data, so my thought was "Hey,
I''ll
> just
> > serialize that data onto my object and periodically synchronize the
> data."
> >
> > class User < ActiveRecord::Base
> > serialize :person_record_data, PersonRecord
> > ... more stuff
> > end
> >
> > u.person_record_data = u.person_record
> > u.save
> >
> > That all works just great... except when I try to get the record back,
> > person_record_data is nil.
> >
> > I can serialize hashes, arrays, etc just fine... but I can''t
seem to
> > serialize ActiveRecord objects... is this a limitation? a bug?
> >
> > Thanks in advance to anyone who can help me out. The documentation on
> what
> > is allowed is pretty vague.
> >
> > >
> >
> >
>
>
> >
>
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