Rails return JSON serialized attribute with_indifferent_access

Question

I previously had:

serialize :params, JSON

But this would return the JSON and convert hash key symbols to strings. I want to reference the hash

Answer 1

Posting comment as answer, per @fguillen's request... Caveat: I am not typically a Rubyist… so this may not be idiomatic or efficient. Functionally, it got me what I wanted. Seems to work in Rails 3.2 and 4.0...

In application_helper.rb:

module ApplicationHelper
  class JSONWithIndifferentAccess
    def self.load(str)
      obj = HashWithIndifferentAccess.new(JSON.load(str))
      #...or simply: obj = JSON.load(str, nil, symbolize_names:true)
      obj.freeze #i also want it set all or nothing, not piecemeal; ymmv
      obj
    end
    def self.dump(obj)
      JSON.dump(obj)
    end
  end
end

In my model, I have a field called rule_spec, serialized into a text field:

serialize :rule_spec, ApplicationHelper::JSONWithIndifferentAccess

Ultimately, I realized I just wanted symbols, not indifferent access, but by tweaking the load method you can get either behavior.