ruby on rails - ActiveRecord serialization problem -

i have db column serialized hash:

class foo < activerecord::base    serialize :bar end 

when store hash inside of bar few levels deep, deeper levels not seem deserialize when need them. objects 1 level deep deserialzed fine. however, objects 2 or more levels deep remain yaml classes.

i tried manually deserializing using yaml::load() got error saying argument wasn't instance of io.

does know why complete ruby object doesn't deserialize?

edit: after further investigation, problem seems stem fact i'm calling virtual attribute serialized yaml.

class foo < activerecord::base    serialize :bar end  class bar < activerecord::base     attr_accessor :enabled end  @bars = @foo.bar[:bars] @bars.each |bar|    puts bar.enabled end 

yields:

nomethoderror: undefined method `enabled' #<yaml::object:0xb6f11844>     (irb):12     (irb):11:in `each'     (irb):11     :0 

does mean deserialization isn't "real", ie, yaml object acts similar original object, it's not actual instance of object?

there's 2 things keep in mind when serializing user-defined objects instead of "plain old ruby" objects.

• you need have user-defined classes loaded before object can de-serialized or instances of generic yaml::object type. de-serializing not auto-load classes.
• some objects may not serialize without customization, though not case.

generally serializing instances of activerecord::base object bad idea these have extraordinary amount of baggage need encoded in addition attribute. best build class derived directly object, default behavior, or simple base class of sort.