Rails + Postgres JSON fields and update_column

Question

I've been playing around Rails (4) + Postgres JSON fields a bit now, and I've noticed that if I do something like this

model.json_data = {
   field1: "hello",
   field2: "world"
}
model.save

it works fine. However if I do

model.update_column(:json_data, {
   field1: "hello",
   field2: "world"
} )

it doesn't work. It doesn't seem like update_column is storing the data as JSON, but just a string with line breaks and tabs included. The problem is, I want the json_data to be generated in an after_save callback, so I need to not re-trigger the after_save callback when updating the JSON field.

Any thoughts on what might be going on here, or how to get around it?

Answer 1

Nevermind, I found a solution.

model.update_column(:json_data, {
   field1: "hello",
   field2: "world"
}.to_json )

Seems obvious in hindsight.