YAML output from rails console

console, ruby, ruby-on-rails, yaml

Solution

It appears to be because rails defaults to using the newer `psych` YAML engine, the older `syck` yaml engine doesn't output the `!binary` keys. If you're just wanting it for testing in the console you can switch back to the older yaml engine as a temp workaround:

 > y User.first
  User Load (0.0ms)  SELECT "users".* FROM "users" LIMIT 1
--- !ruby/object:User
attributes:
  !binary "aWQ=": 1
  !binary "bmFtZQ==": Example User
  !binary "ZW1haWw=": user@example.com

 > YAML::ENGINE.yamler= 'syck'
=> "syck"

 > y User.first
  User Load (1.0ms)  SELECT "users".* FROM "users" LIMIT 1
--- !ruby/object:User
attributes:
  id: 1
  name: Example User
  email: user@example.com

You would only need to do this when your ActiveRecord column names/attributes keys are encoded using `Encoding::ASCII_8BIT` which I think only happens with SQLite.

Update:

Since posting this answer the SQLite3 gem has been fixed to return utf8 for column names. Make sure you're using version 1.3.6 (or higher) of the sqlite3 gem. Then the default/newer psych yaml engine (which also supports human-readable unicode output) will work without problems:

 > y User.first
  User Load (0.0ms)  SELECT "users".* FROM "users" LIMIT 1
  EXPLAIN (0.0ms)  EXPLAIN QUERY PLAN SELECT "users".* FROM "users" LIMIT 1
EXPLAIN for: SELECT  "users".* FROM "users"  LIMIT 1
0|0|0|SCAN TABLE users (~1000000 rows)

--- !ruby/object:User
attributes:
  id: 1
  name: irmão
  email: user@example.com

Problem

Original source