Columns marked for serialization do not serialize
Reported by Bryce Kerley | July 15th, 2008 @ 06:54 PM | in 2.x
Columns in an AR model can be marked for serialization if they are being used to store Arrays, Hashes, or other YAML-able data non-relationally:
class Hat < ActiveRecord::Base
serialize :description
end
However, if this column is used for a variant/union type (such as a column used sometimes for strings, sometimes for arrays, and sometimes for hashes), data can become corrupted when it is deserialized on its way out of the database:
1) Failure:
test_what_goes_in_comes_back_out(HatTest)
[./test/unit/hat_test.rb:10:in `test_what_goes_in_comes_back_out'
/Users/bryce/Documents/serialize_test/vendor/rails/activerecord/lib/../../activesupport/lib/active_support/testing/setup_and_teardown.rb:67:in `__send__'
/Users/bryce/Documents/serialize_test/vendor/rails/activerecord/lib/../../activesupport/lib/active_support/testing/setup_and_teardown.rb:67:in `run']:
<"<span style=\"color: #800\">SODA HAT IS A SLANG TERM FOR A LID</span>\n"> expected but was
<{"<span style=\"color"=>nil}>.
A project demonstrating this can be found at: http://github.com/bkerley/serial...
The attached patch adds a test for this problem and provides a fix that passes rake test_sqlite3.
Comments and changes to this ticket
-
Bryce Kerley July 15th, 2008 @ 07:38 PM
So it turns out that attributes_with_quotes grabs the unserialized version through the provided accessor, and then re-serializes them into the database. http://github.com/bkerley/serial... adds a test displaying this case. I'm still cooking up a fix for this.
-
Bryce Kerley July 15th, 2008 @ 09:58 PM
Can't do this the way I'm doing it without creating stupid workarounds for lots of tests.
-
Bryce Kerley July 17th, 2008 @ 03:10 PM
- → Tag changed from “activerecord bug patch serialization tested yaml” to “activerecord bug patch serialization yaml”
OK, got this most of the way fixed, except I'm failing a couple validation tests:
1) Failure: test_validate_uniqueness_scoped_to_defining_class(ValidationsTest) [./test/cases/validations_test.rb:393:in `test_validate_uniqueness_scoped_to_defining_class' ./test/cases/../../lib/../../activesupport/lib/active_support/testing/setup_and_teardown.rb:67:in `__send__' ./test/cases/../../lib/../../activesupport/lib/active_support/testing/setup_and_teardown.rb:67:in `run']: Saving r2. <false> is not true. 2) Failure: test_validate_uniqueness_with_scope(ValidationsTest) [./test/cases/validations_test.rb:376:in `test_validate_uniqueness_with_scope' ./test/cases/../../lib/../../activesupport/lib/active_support/testing/setup_and_teardown.rb:67:in `__send__' ./test/cases/../../lib/../../activesupport/lib/active_support/testing/setup_and_teardown.rb:67:in `run']: Saving r2 first time. <false> is not true.The changed code, tests, etc. are in the git repo: http://github.com/bkerley/serial...
-
Murray Steele July 23rd, 2008 @ 04:13 PM
+1
The breakages you are seeing were already there. Even without your patch you can't validate uniqueness against serialized attributes. It's just that before a string wouldn't be saved as a yamlized string so the find would work. (E.g. with/without your patch it does select * from whatever where whatever.serialized_attribute = 'a string'; whereas what's in the DB is '---\n "a string"'.)
Either:
1. we fix the tests to not test validation of uniqueness against serialized attributes
2. we fix validates_uniqueness of to work with serialized attribtues
3. we fix finders to know about serialized attributes and co-erce values accordingly.
1 or 3 work for me.
-
Joshua Peek October 28th, 2008 @ 04:31 PM
- → State changed from “new” to “stale”
Staling out, please reopen if this is still a problem.
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