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FAQ
When I create a table with the following SQL:

# create table foos (id SERIAL, content VARCHAR(255));

And define a class as follows:

class Foo < ActiveRecord::Base
serialize :content, JSON
end

Creating a new instance of the class gives an error:
f = Foo.new
NoMethodError: undefined method `read' for nil:NilClass
from /Users/andy/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p290/gems/activesupport-3.1.0/lib/active_support/whiny_nil.rb:48:in `method_missing'
from /Users/andy/Code/FakePlatform/vendor/gems/Darwin/gems/json-1.4.6/lib/json/common.rb:286:in `load'
from /Users/andy/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p290/gems/activerecord-3.1.0/lib/active_record/base.rb:1938:in `block in set_serialized_attributes'

Does anyone have any ideas how to fix this?

It should work (it's such a simple case).

Cheers,


Andy

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  • Frederick Cheung at Oct 6, 2011 at 12:30 pm ⇧

    On Oct 6, 11:02 am, Andy Jeffries wrote:
    When I create a table with the following SQL:

    # create table foos (id SERIAL, content VARCHAR(255));

    And define a class as follows:

    class Foo < ActiveRecord::Base
    serialize :content, JSON
    end
    the second argument to serialise is used to say that you always want
    the serialised object to be of a certain class (e.g. Hash, an
    application specific class etc.). I'm not sure what you meant by
    passing JSON as that argument but I suspect that it isn't doing what
    you think it is.

    Fred
    Creating a new instance of the class gives an error:
    f = Foo.new
    NoMethodError: undefined method `read' for nil:NilClass
    from /Users/andy/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p290/gems/activesupport-3.1.0/lib/active_s upport/whiny_nil.rb:48:in `method_missing'
    from /Users/andy/Code/FakePlatform/vendor/gems/Darwin/gems/json-1.4.6/lib/json/c ommon.rb:286:in `load'
    from /Users/andy/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p290/gems/activerecord-3.1.0/lib/active_re cord/base.rb:1938:in `block in set_serialized_attributes'

    Does anyone have any ideas how to fix this?

    It should work (it's such a simple case).

    Cheers,

    Andy
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  • Andy Jeffries at Oct 6, 2011 at 1:14 pm ⇧

    the second argument to serialise is used to say that you always want
    the serialised object to be of a certain class (e.g. Hash, an
    application specific class etc.). I'm not sure what you meant by
    passing JSON as that argument but I suspect that it isn't doing what
    you think it is.
    I was basing it on this article (as well as a stack overflow answer) that you can provide a custom serializer in Rails 3.1:

    http://edgerails.info/articles/what-s-new-in-edge-rails/2011/03/09/custom-activerecord-attribute-serialization/index.html

    JSON provides a dump and load method on the class so it should be acceptable as the serializer.

    Is this article incorrect or my understanding of it?

    Cheers,


    Andy

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  • Andy Jeffries at Oct 6, 2011 at 1:33 pm ⇧

    I was basing it on this article (as well as a stack overflow answer) that you can provide a custom serializer in Rails 3.1:

    http://edgerails.info/articles/what-s-new-in-edge-rails/2011/03/09/custom-activerecord-attribute-serialization/index.html

    JSON provides a dump and load method on the class so it should be acceptable as the serializer.

    Is this article incorrect or my understanding of it?
    Having just had a read of ActiveRecord::Base, I still can't see how I go wrong…

    Base#serialize (line 557 of base.rb in ActiveRecord 3.1.0)

    if the object supplied as the second argument responds to :load and :dump (which JSON does), then it uses that object, if not it wraps it in a YAMLColumn and sets the entry in serialized_attributes to that object. Then in:

    Base#arel_attributes_values (line 1963 of base.rb in ActiveRecord 3.1.0)

    if there is an entry in serialized_attributes for a given attribute name (with a value put in to the coder variable) it calls coder.dump with the attribute value.

    So, I can't understand why JSON wouldn't work as a second parameter...

    Cheers,


    Andy

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  • Tim Shaffer at Oct 6, 2011 at 1:44 pm ⇧
    You're using the syntax of serialize properly.

    The problem looks like it's in the JSON.load method not properly handling a
    nil value:

    def load(source, proc = nil)
    if source.respond_to? :to_str
    source = source.to_str
    elsif source.respond_to? :to_io
    source = source.to_io.read
    else
    source = source.read
    end
    result = parse(source, :max_nesting => false, :allow_nan => true)
    recurse_proc(result, &proc) if proc
    result
    end

    Basically it gets to the line "source = source.read" and throws up because
    source is nil and nil doesn't have a read method.

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  • Andy Jeffries at Oct 6, 2011 at 1:45 pm ⇧
    I've also just tried upgrading JSON to 1.6.0 (as that's the version that seems to be installed if I do gem install json), same problem.

    Cheers,


    Andy

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grouprubyonrails-talk @
categoriesrubyonrails
postedOct 6, '11 at 10:03a
activeOct 6, '11 at 1:45p
posts6
users3
websiterubyonrails.org
irc#RubyOnRails

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Andy Jeffries: 4 posts Tim Shaffer: 1 post Frederick Cheung: 1 post

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