Rails - Oct 2009 - Loading & Dumping of data in AR with Marshal

Hey,

I''m writing an application that stores models attributes in a single  
column called `data`, using Marshal. My ultimate goal is to allow any/ 
all records to be saved in one database table. I''m wondering if  
there''s a better way to do this, and also if I should Base64 encode  
the result of Marshal.dump as mentioned here:
http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/164786#723805

Here''s my current code:

# Post(id: integer, data: text, type: string, created_at: datetime,  
updated_at: datetime)
class Content < ActiveRecord::Base
   private
     def unmarshal
       Marshal.load(self.data)
     end
end

class Post < Content
   before_save :marshal

   def title
     unmarshal[:title]
   end

   def title=(value)
     @title = value
   end

   private
     def marshal
       self.data = Marshal.dump({ :title => self.title })
     end
end

Thanks for any tips/help!

On Oct 9, 5:50 am, Mat Harvard
<mat.harvard.gro...-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
> Hey,
>
> I''m writing an application that stores models attributes in a
single  
> column called `data`, using Marshal. My ultimate goal is to allow any/
> all records to be saved in one database table. I''m wondering if  
> there''s a better way to do this, and also if I should Base64
encode  
> the result of Marshal.dump as mentioned
here:http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/164786#723805
>
This design is well on it''s way to ending up on TheDailyWTF. Several
things:

- using Marshal is a bad, bad, bad idea. The format is fragile when
class definitions are changed and not guaranteed to be readable across
Ruby versions. It''s also completely incomprehensible to anything
besides Ruby.

- you''re re-implementing the idea of serialized fields (check the
ActiveRecord docs) using Marshal instead of YAML.

- you''re trying to jam all the data into one table. This is almost
certainly wrong.

If your data set is REALLY as unstructured as you''re implying, you may
want to look at some of the schemaless document DB stuff (CouchDB and
friends).

--Matt Jones