From: Jan Svitok <jan.svitok@...>
Date: 2006-10-07T03:26:23+09:00
Subject: Re: active record question

On 10/6/06, Dark Ambient <sambient@gmail.com> wrote:
> Sorry guys, I try and keep these sorts of questions to the Rails list but
> I've had little luck over there.  Since this is a Ruby / Active Record
> question I thought I'd throw it out here.
> Apologies if it's not appropriate.
>
> Basically I have a form for the user to fill in.  Within it are various
> select lists and those are set to multiple, so user can make multiple
> choices.
> I seem to be able to get them into the database using serialize() , but
> integers appear particularly funky with lots of hyphens and quotes.  As well
> these values will be needed for queries and my understanding is that
> serialize is not the way to go.
>
> So I wouldn't mind some recommendations regarding options I might have to
> accomplish this feat, not including (more tables, if that's possible).
> My initial thoughts and I haven't tried it yet is perhaps using some type of
> regex to clean them up marshalling out , but not entirely sure if that makes
> sense.

I suppose you can clean up the serialized form via custom attribute
setters, getters (AWDwR page 284:)

class ProductData < ActiveRecord::Base
  CU = 18
  def length
    read_attribute("length") * CU
  end

  def lenght=(inches)
     write_attribute("length", Float(inches) / CU)
  end
end

Then it depends on what form is convenient for you and that depends on
the data type and what you plan to do with the data (for example you
could do array.map {|i| i.to_s}.join(',') for an array of integers)

Disclaimer: not tested, pure theory ;-)

J.