Question

In a Rails 3.2 app I have a Model with a text column :data. In the model I have:

class Model
  serialize :data, Hash
end

This is storing data correctly, in the format data:{"attr1"=>"foo", "attr2"=>"bar"....}.

If I want to display this in a show view I can do <%= @model.data %>, and the entire hash is rendered.

But what if I only need to render a specific attribute? Is this possible?

I’ve tried several approaches that seemed like they might work:

<%= @model.data.attr1 %> – generates undefined method 'attr1'
<%- @model.data[:attr1] %> – displays nothing

Am I missing something?
.
Thanks for any pointers

Answer 1

<%- @model.data[:attr1] %>

Replace with:

<%= @model.data["attr1"] %>

NOTE: <%= at the beginning. You’ve used <%- mistakenly.

UPD:

I recommend to use the HashWithIndifferentAccess:

serialize :data, HashWithIndifferentAccess

This way you can fetch your values via symbols or strings as the key.