Encoding trouble when creating an ActiveRecord object.

[guilherme]

Hello,

I'm having issues trying to save my rails object.
The exception is:
Encoding::CompatibilityError: incompatible character encodings: UTF-8 and ASCII-8BIT
My backtrace says:
[GEM_ROOT]/gems/arel-2.0.10/lib/arel/visitors/to_sql.rb:69:in join' [GEM_ROOT]/gems/arel-2.0.10/lib/arel/visitors/to_sql.rb:69:invisit_Arel_Nodes_Values'
[GEM_ROOT]/gems/arel-2.0.10/lib/arel/visitors/visitor.rb:15:in visit' [GEM_ROOT]/gems/arel-2.0.10/lib/arel/visitors/to_sql.rb:59:invisit_Arel_Nodes_InsertStatement'
[GEM_ROOT]/gems/arel-2.0.10/lib/arel/visitors/visitor.rb:15:in visit' [GEM_ROOT]/gems/arel-2.0.10/lib/arel/visitors/visitor.rb:5:inaccept'
[GEM_ROOT]/gems/arel-2.0.10/lib/arel/visitors/to_sql.rb:18:in block in accept' [GEM_ROOT]/gems/activerecord-3.0.9/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/connection_pool.rb:111:inwith_connection'
[GEM_ROOT]/gems/arel-2.0.10/lib/arel/visitors/to_sql.rb:16:in accept' [GEM_ROOT]/gems/arel-2.0.10/lib/arel/tree_manager.rb:20:into_sql'
[GEM_ROOT]/gems/arel-2.0.10/lib/arel/select_manager.rb:217:in insert' [GEM_ROOT]/gems/activerecord-3.0.9/lib/active_record/relation.rb:14:ininsert'
[GEM_ROOT]/gems/activerecord-3.0.9/lib/active_record/persistence.rb:274:in create' [GEM_ROOT]/gems/activerecord-3.0.9/lib/active_record/timestamp.rb:47:increate'
[GEM_ROOT]/gems/activerecord-3.0.9/lib/active_record/callbacks.rb:277:in block in create' [GEM_ROOT]/gems/activesupport-3.0.9/lib/active_support/callbacks.rb:414:in_run_create_callbacks'
[GEM_ROOT]/gems/activerecord-3.0.9/lib/active_record/callbacks.rb:277:in create' [GEM_ROOT]/gems/activerecord-3.0.9/lib/active_record/persistence.rb:250:increate_or_update'
[GEM_ROOT]/gems/activerecord-3.0.9/lib/active_record/callbacks.rb:273:in block in create_or_update' [GEM_ROOT]/gems/activesupport-3.0.9/lib/active_support/callbacks.rb:444:in_run_save_callbacks'
[GEM_ROOT]/gems/activerecord-3.0.9/lib/active_record/callbacks.rb:273:in create_or_update' [GEM_ROOT]/gems/activerecord-3.0.9/lib/active_record/persistence.rb:40:insave'
[GEM_ROOT]/gems/activerecord-3.0.9/lib/active_record/validations.rb:43:in save' [GEM_ROOT]/gems/activerecord-3.0.9/lib/active_record/attribute_methods/dirty.rb:21:insave'
[GEM_ROOT]/gems/activerecord-3.0.9/lib/active_record/transactions.rb:240:in block (2 levels) in save' [GEM_ROOT]/gems/activerecord-3.0.9/lib/active_record/transactions.rb:292:inblock in with_transaction_returning_status'
[GEM_ROOT]/gems/activerecord-3.0.9/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/database_statements.rb:139:in transaction' [GEM_ROOT]/gems/activerecord-3.0.9/lib/active_record/transactions.rb:207:intransaction'
[GEM_ROOT]/gems/activerecord-3.0.9/lib/active_record/transactions.rb:290:in with_transaction_returning_status' [GEM_ROOT]/gems/activerecord-3.0.9/lib/active_record/transactions.rb:240:inblock in save'
[GEM_ROOT]/gems/activerecord-3.0.9/lib/active_record/transactions.rb:251:in rollback_active_record_state!' [GEM_ROOT]/gems/activerecord-3.0.9/lib/active_record/transactions.rb:239:insave'
app/controllers/lambs_controller.rb:245:in block in create' [GEM_ROOT]/gems/activerecord-3.0.9/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/database_statements.rb:139:intransaction'
[GEM_ROOT]/gems/activerecord-3.0.9/lib/active_record/transactions.rb:207:in transaction' app/controllers/my_controller.rb:229:increate'

i'm using ruby 1.9.2p180 (2011-02-18 revision 30909) [i686-linux] and adjusted the encoding as utf-8 either on database.yml and my_controller.rb with (#encoding:utf-8)

How to solve this issue?

thank you.

[tenderlove]

I guess you're storing an image or something along with some UTF-8 data in the database? Is that correct?

[guilherme]

yes! what should i do?

[guilherme]

@tenderlove, could you help me to fix this bug?

tell me where i look, how it could be solved this issue.. i could make the code and pull request.

thanks

[tenderlove]

You cannot concatenate UTF-8 and binary data. ARel is building a SQL statement, and that is exactly what is happening. In order to solve this, you have three choices:

1. Upgrade to Rails 3.1 so that it uses prepared statements
2. Encode the data with something the database understands (like base64)
3. Use two sql statements, one inserts the UTF-8 data, the other does an update with only ASCII + Binary.

This is not an arel bug (unfortunately).