Some error saving to a Rails session [Marshalling bug?]

This is related to an issue I am having with JRuby 1.1.5. I am storing an object called PortalUser in my session. Here is a pretty print of the object in the session.

:portal_user=>
#<PortalUser:0x22c0
@address="999 W. Hamilton Ave #379",
@clear_password="9onb2cr",
@clear_password_confirmation=nil,
@email="lsdajflka@lsdajflsda.com",
@first_name="lajsdfl",
@id=0,
@last_name="aljdfslakj",
@lease_id=0,
@move_in_date=Tue, 08 Jun 2010,
@property_id=2,
@tenant_flag=true,
@unit_number="379",
@user_name="lsdajflka@lsdajflsda.com">

Note that @move_in_date is a DateTime object, not a string. When I redirect_to the next page, I get the following stack trace in my development.log.

/Unable to render embedded object: File (\ FAILSAFE /) not found.\ Thu Dec 11 10:55:50 -0700 2008
Status: 500 Internal Server Error
dump format error()
/Users/jeffereysutherland/Development/rental_address/trunk/third_party/jruby/1_1_5/jruby-1.1.5/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.1.0/lib/action_controller/cgi_process.rb:184:in `stale_session_check!'
/Users/jeffereysutherland/Development/rental_address/trunk/third_party/jruby/1_1_5/jruby-1.1.5/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.1.0/lib/action_controller/cgi_process.rb:116:in `session'
/Users/jeffereysutherland/Development/rental_address/trunk/third_party/jruby/1_1_5/jruby-1.1.5/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.1.0/lib/action_controller/base.rb:1135:in `assign_shortcuts'
/Users/jeffereysutherland/Development/rental_address/trunk/third_party/jruby/1_1_5/jruby-1.1.5/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.1.0/lib/action_controller/flash.rb:166:in `assign_shortcuts_with_flash'
/Users/jeffereysutherland/Development/rental_address/trunk/third_party/jruby/1_1_5/jruby-1.1.5/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.1.0/lib/action_controller/base.rb:523:in `process'
/Users/jeffereysutherland/Development/rental_address/trunk/third_party/jruby/1_1_5/jruby-1.1.5/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.1.0/lib/action_controller/filters.rb:569:in `process_with_filters'
/Users/jeffereysutherland/Development/rental_address/trunk/third_party/jruby/1_1_5/jruby-1.1.5/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.1.0/lib/action_controller/session_management.rb:130:in `process_with_session_management_support'
/Users/jeffereysutherland/Development/rental_address/trunk/third_party/jruby/1_1_5/jruby-1.1.5/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.1.0/lib/action_controller/base.rb:389:in `process'
/Users/jeffereysutherland/Development/rental_address/trunk/third_party/jruby/1_1_5/jruby-1.1.5/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.1.0/lib/action_controller/dispatcher.rb:149:in `handle_request'
/Users/jeffereysutherland/Development/rental_address/trunk/third_party/jruby/1_1_5/jruby-1.1.5/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.1.0/lib/action_controller/dispatcher.rb:107:in `dispatch'
/Users/jeffereysutherland/Development/rental_address/trunk/third_party/jruby/1_1_5/jruby-1.1.5/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.1.0/lib/action_controller/dispatcher.rb:104:in `dispatch'
/Users/jeffereysutherland/Development/rental_address/trunk/third_party/jruby/1_1_5/jruby-1.1.5/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.1.0/lib/action_controller/dispatcher.rb:120:in `dispatch_cgi'
/Users/jeffereysutherland/Development/rental_address/trunk/third_party/jruby/1_1_5/jruby-1.1.5/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.1.0/lib/action_controller/dispatcher.rb:35:in `dispatch'
/Users/jeffereysutherland/Development/rental_address/trunk/third_party/jruby/1_1_5/jruby-1.1.5/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rails-2.1.0/lib/webrick_server.rb:112:in `handle_dispatch'
/Users/jeffereysutherland/Development/rental_address/trunk/third_party/jruby/1_1_5/jruby-1.1.5/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rails-2.1.0/lib/webrick_server.rb:78:in `service'
/Users/jeffereysutherland/Development/rental_address/trunk/third_party/jruby/1_1_5/jruby-1.1.5/lib/ruby/1.8/webrick/httpserver.rb:104:in `service'
/Users/jeffereysutherland/Development/rental_address/trunk/third_party/jruby/1_1_5/jruby-1.1.5/lib/ruby/1.8/webrick/httpserver.rb:65:in `run'
/Users/jeffereysutherland/Development/rental_address/trunk/third_party/jruby/1_1_5/jruby-1.1.5/lib/ruby/1.8/webrick/server.rb:173:in `start_thread'
:1:in `start'

Googling the issue turned up this thread: http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/172390

I changed @move_in_date to be a string, and my sessions started working again. It appears that JRuby 1.1.5 is not handling attributes that are objects in the session. My solution is to either make sure all my attributes in session objects are strings, or to serialize the object to YAML before putting it in the session.

• Jeff Sutherland

Thanks, works fine with string.

> It appears that JRuby 1.1.5 is not handling attributes that are objects in the session

Why is that so?

• Feature?
• Bug?

It's a bug. RoR on standard Ruby can handle objects in the session. RoR on JRuby can't.

JRUBY-3289 may be related or possible the source of this bug.

This is NOT a minimal case (but I thought I would share it since I spent a minute trying):

require 'rubygems'
require 'active_support'

store = ActiveSupport::Cache::FileStore.new("/tmp")

class Foo
def initialize
@d = DateTime.now
@r = Rational(1,2)
end
end

store.write("foo", Foo.new)
foo = store.read("foo")
puts "Done #{foo}"

It is weird though...Beside the type of store wouldn't the bug really involve marshal.dump in some fashion not working for some types of objects?

I can't reproduce this with trunk as of 9058, it seems to be fixed. Please re-test, and if it still fails for you, please post a test case.