Array Attribute for Ruby Model

Question

Is it possible to create an attribute for a class that is an array? I tried reading this but I didn\'t get much out of it. I want to do something like this:

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Answer 1

While you can use a serialized array as tokland suggested, this is rarely a good idea in a relational database. You have three superior alternatives:

• If the array holds entity objects, it's probably better modeled as a has_many relationship.
• If the array is really just an array of values such as numbers, then you might want to put each value in a separate field and use composed_of.
• If you're going to be using a lot of array values that aren't has_manys, you might want to investigate a DB that actually supports array fields. PostgreSQL does this (and array fields are supported in Rails 4 migrations), but you might want to use either a non-SQL database like MongoDB or object persistence such as MagLev is supposed to provide.

If you can describe your use case -- that is, what data you've got in the array -- we can try to help figure out what the best course of action is.