Rails & MySQL: Array winds up with ---[] or --- stored in the DB

Question

I am extracting a series of strings from an XML stream and storing them in a mySQL Database (tried with VARCHAR and TEXT). At the start of each array, in the DB, I get --- and then either a [] if it is a blank array or the values.

Rake task code:

@issue = Array.new  
items.each do |item| #items is the parsed elements from XML
    link_key = item.xpath('key').inner_text
    @issue << link_key
    Rails.logger.debug("Issue: #{@issue.inspect}")
  end

Database value example:

"--- []"

-or-

"--- - CR-3528"

Not sure what else would be useful.

Dave Newton · Accepted Answer · 2011-11-28 20:01:49Z

3

That's because you're serializing an array.

One way to deal with this is to mark a field as serialized with serialize (docs):

serialize :issue

See this for additional details.

If you had been storing the value as text, you should not have seen this--it would have been just the text.

answered Nov 28, 2011 at 20:01

Dave Newton

161k27 gold badges263 silver badges310 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

2 Comments

ScottJShea Over a year ago

Well bust my buffers and steal my chocolate. Thanks!

Dave Newton Over a year ago

@ScottJShea Heh ;) Those guys thought of everything. Sometimes.

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Rails & MySQL: Array winds up with ---[] or --- stored in the DB

1 Answer 1

2 Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

2 Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related