Rails/ActiveRecord 3 comes with a cool ActiveRecord::Store feature that allows for creating a fairly lightweight schema-less model. However, it uses YAML, which has poor performance and is just generally silly.

This gem enhances ActiveRecord to store such things using the Marshal module which is pretty darn fast, compact and seemingly less flakey than Psych.

You can call marshal_store similary to how you would previously have called store.

class FooModel < ActiveRecord::Base
  # The old, YAML-based version would look like:
  # store :extras, :accessors => :foo, :bar

  # The new, marshal-based version would look like:
  marshal_store :extras, :accessors => :foo, :bar
end

In addition, you can also use the exposed marshal coder as a column coder, much like YamlCoder in serialize:

class FooModel < ActiveRecord::Base
  # Used to serialize field as a hash via YAML
  # serialize :field, Hash

  # Now use marshal!
  serialize :field, ArMarshalStore::NilFriendlyMarshal
end

This gem has been tested with:

• Ruby 1.8.7

• Ruby 1.9.3

If this works for you, great! If you use a different ruby, please let me know, and I will update this.

Add ar_marshal_store to your Gemfile.

gem 'ar_marshal_store', :git => 'git:https://github.com/hfwang/ar_marshal_store.git'

The necessary code is included into ActiveRecord::Base automatically.

require 'ar_marshal_store'
class MyModel < ActiveRecord::Base
  include ArMarshalStore

  # ... usage of ArMarshalStore here.

end

• Fork the project.

• Make your feature addition or bug fix.

• Add tests for it. This is important so I don’t break it in a future version unintentionally.

• Commit, do not mess with rakefile, version, or history. (if you want to have your own version, that is fine but bump version in a commit by itself I can ignore when I pull)

• Send me a pull request. Bonus points for topic branches.

(2-clause BSD)

Copyright © 2012, Hsiu-Fan Wang

All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

• Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

• Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS “AS IS” AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.