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For some reason, I cannot get ActiveRecord to correctly format the insert statement when using an array type column. It seems to want to escape the Postgres notation:

{"val1", "val2", "val3"} into \{\"val1\", \"val2\", \"val3\"\}

Resulting in an error:

PG::Error: ERROR: array value must start with "{" or dimension information

Am I running my db commands wrong? rake db:seed and bundle exec rake db:seed cause this error as well as running migrations.

I'm running Rails 3.2.13 and Postgres 9.3.1

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Are you using the Rails way to serialize array attributes when saving arrays into db? –  Twitter handle jasoki Nov 12 '13 at 22:41
    
No, it's a list. i.e. Thing.create({title: 'xxx', slugs: ["x", "y" "z"]}) –  James Nov 12 '13 at 22:44
    
Use Rails' serialize method.. Read up on "Saving arrays, hashes, and other non-mappable objects in text columns" –  Twitter handle jasoki Nov 12 '13 at 22:48
    
@dmtri.com he wants to use Postgres. James could you please provide more code/context? –  RyanB Nov 12 '13 at 23:04
    
@RyanB, using serialize method to store array should work for postgresql as well. –  Twitter handle jasoki Nov 12 '13 at 23:09

1 Answer 1

up vote 1 down vote

The Rails3 version of ActiveRecord doesn't understand PostgreSQL arrays natively so it is falling back to "I don't know what it is so I'll pretend it is a string" mode. If you install postgres_ext then you'll be able to use arrays properly:

Model.where(:some_array_column => [2, 3, 5, 6, 11]).to_sql
# SELECT "models".* FROM "models" WHERE "models"."some_array_column" = '{2,3,5,6,11}'

and inserting a %w[val1 val2 val3] array should work similarly.

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