# YAML serialization

**URL:** <https://discuss.rubyonrails.org/t/yaml-serialization/11832>\
**Category:** rubyonrails-talk\
**Created:** [April 18, 2007, 12:35pm UTC](https://discuss.rubyonrails.org/t/yaml-serialization/11832 "2007-04-18T12:35:45Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Florian\_Assmann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/779978/32.png) [@Florian\_Assmann](https://discuss.rubyonrails.org/u/Florian_Assmann)\
**Post date:** [April 18, 2007, 12:35pm UTC](https://discuss.rubyonrails.org/t/yaml-serialization/11832/1 "2007-04-18T12:35:45Z")

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Hi,

something wrong with ActiveRecord or YAML? They don't put Strings into Quotes when it serializes. This gave me trouble when I serialized a String with a double colon (eg. 'key: value'). After AR unserialized the Value it became a Hash since a String 'key: value' becomes attribute[:key] =\> value... ☹

Sincerely Florian

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**Author:** ![Mark\_James](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/58f4c7/32.png) [@Mark\_James](https://discuss.rubyonrails.org/u/Mark_James)\
**Post date:** [April 18, 2007, 11:34pm UTC](https://discuss.rubyonrails.org/t/yaml-serialization/11832/2 "2007-04-18T23:34:57Z")

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Florian Aßmann wrote:

> something wrong with ActiveRecord or YAML? They don't put Strings into Quotes when it serializes. This gave me trouble when I serialized a String with a double colon (eg. 'key: value'). After AR unserialized the Value it became a Hash since a String 'key: value' becomes attribute[:key] =\> value... ☹

Yes, this is an ActiveRecord bug. It's not YAMLizing String objects when writing to the DB, but is de-YAMLizing when reading from the DB.