Serializing objects to database

I'm trying to serialize, err Marshal, an AR model with associations to a db field.

Seems simple enough to start with. After a dump I have a bunch of Binary data in my field, and looking at with a Hex viewer, it seems to have AR-looking stuff.

However, when I try to re-constitute the model, I get an error "undefined class/module Xyz" where Xyz is one of the associated models.

This is in Dev mode, so, figuring this just an issue of Rails not having loaded that model file yet, I just tossed a require for each of the associated models at the top of the controller file doing the Marshal.load to ensure they are loaded first.

It's simple, and it worked, but I'm wondering if there is another solution, or, "yep, that's how we fix that"

-- gw

Greg Willits wrote:

I'm trying to serialize, err Marshal, an AR model with associations to a db field.

Seems simple enough to start with. After a dump I have a bunch of Binary data in my field, and looking at with a Hex viewer, it seems to have AR-looking stuff.

However, when I try to re-constitute the model, I get an error "undefined class/module Xyz" where Xyz is one of the associated models.

This is in Dev mode, so, figuring this just an issue of Rails not having loaded that model file yet, I just tossed a require for each of the associated models at the top of the controller file doing the Marshal.load to ensure they are loaded first.

It's simple, and it worked, but I'm wondering if there is another solution, or, "yep, that's how we fix that"

-- gw

I haven't peered into how Marshal works itself.

But I imagine the problem is that it bypasses const_missing, so rails' clever file_name const-get-ing doesnt work.

d = RudeQueue.get(:rar)

=> "\004\bo:\nEvent\t:\026@attributes_cache{\000:\020@attributes{\f\"\rend_date0\"\017start_date0\"\tname\"\tblah\"\017updated_atu:\tTime\r�\e\200\273\0259R\"\aidi\006\"\020description0\"\017created_at@\r:\f@errorso:\031ActiveRecord::Errors\a:\n@base@\000;\t{\000:\020@new_recordF"

Marshal.load(d)

ArgumentError: undefined class/module Event   from (irb):3:in `load'   from (irb):3

Event

=> Event(id: integer, name: string, description: text, start_date: date, end_date: date, created_at: datetime, updated_at: datetime)

Marshal.load(d)

=> #<Event id: 1, name: "blah", description: nil, start_date: nil, end_date: nil, created_at: "2008-06-22 15:20:35", updated_at: "2008-06-22 15:20:35">

So I imagine there is no clever way to fix it, except to ensure that the related class is already loaded.

i believe that's true. In these cases it's advisable to use require_dependency rather than require as by using require you are side stepping Rails' dependency mechanism completely which can lead to odd and hard to track down problems.

Fre