ActiveRecord converts symbol keys to strings when serializing my hash

Question

I have a Rails model class with a serialized Hash attribute, like this:

class Action
  serialize :metadata, Hash
  # . . .
end

That column is stored in a text column with a YAML encoding. The problem is that when I pass a metadata value to the create! method, the hash keys are converted from symbols to strings, but that conversion doesn't happen other times. For example:

$ rails console
> a = Action.create!(:metadata => {:foo => "bar"})
> a.metadata
 => {"foo"=>"bar"}
> a.metadata[:fizz] = "buzz"
> a.metadata
 => {"foo"=>"bar", :fizz=>"buzz"}

Now when I save the model, the database is going to have this text value:

---
foo: bar
:fizz: buzz

Any suggestions how to fix this?

(This is with Rails 3.0.16.)

Answer 1

class Action < ActiveRecord::Base
  def metadata
    self[:metadata].try :symbolize_keys
  end
end