Getting unexpected string value for NULL values

Rails
1

Upgrading a legacy app from 1.x to 2.1…

The app has a Product model, and the Products migration contains:

  t.column :serial_no, :string, :default => :null

But if I create new, empty Product object like this in script/console:

p = Product.new

The serial_no field is a string with this value:

p.serial_no
=> “— :null\n”

I would have expected nil instead of a string representation of null.
This is causing a slew of tests to break.

Why is this happening in 2.1?

The app uses Postgresql 8.3, if that matters.

Thanks,
Jeff

2

On Aug 13, 2008, at 10:21 AM, Jeff wrote:

Upgrading a legacy app from 1.x to 2.1…

The app has a Product model, and the Products migration contains:

 t.column :serial_no, :string, :default => :null

You probably mean to have:

:default => nil

which is the same as not specifying a result.

This is causing a slew of tests to break.
You have a symbol :null rather than nil or “null”. The YAML
serialization you see is a reasonable way to store a Ruby symbol in a
database.

Why is this happening in 2.1?

The app uses Postgresql 8.3, if that matters.

Thanks,
Jeff

You’re welcome,
-Rob

Rob B. http://agileconsultingllc.com
[email protected]

3

On Aug 13, 9:31 am, Rob B. [email protected]
wrote:

    :default => nil

Ugh… yes, thanks for spotting that. This is a legacy app that I
didn’t write, but I guess I can simply write a new migration to change
the column default.

Thanks!
Jeff

REST with Rails
Saturday, Oct 4, 2008
Austin, TX
http://www.purpleworkshops.com/workshops/rest-and-web-services