Is there a way to have a custom serialization for fields in rails, a method that runs when a field is saved and loaded to convert from/to a string which is what ultimately is saved on the database.

Specifically what I want to do is have a field of type symbol like gender, with possible values :male and :female storing "male" and "female" on the database. There are some workarounds, like:

def gender
  read_attribute(:gender).try(:to_sym)
end

but that leaves obj.attributes unchanged, so it's a leaky abstraction.

ruby-on-rails ruby serialization
Edit
Report