Rails: Storing BigDecimal in Database

Question

I am handling a bunch of BigDecimals, which I want to store to my database. Ideally without any loss of accuracy. I don't know the nicest way to achieve that.

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This came to my mind:

t.decimal :value, precision: 1000, scale: 30

It does not look like a good way to approach this problem. 1. it still compromises accuracy. 2. It's is getting unnecessarily large.

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Is there a way to store the object, e.g.: #<BigDecimal:586a238,'0.563E0',9(36)> to the database (within a text column) and then re-initialize it as a BigDecimal?

Answer 1

You might want to look into composed_of.

But I prefer using custom getter and setter methods because I thing they are easier to read and to understand.

Example: Imagine your attribute is named foo and you want to use BigDecimal in the app but store the value as a string in the database:

def foo
  BigDecimal.new(read_attribute(:foo))
end

def foo=(foo)
  write_attribute(:foo, foo.to_s)
end