PGError: ERROR: invalid byte sequence for encoding "UTF8": 0xa7 (ActiveRecord::StatementInvalid)

Working on a rails application and have decided to make the switch from MySql to Postgresql; ran into a few minor issues along the way and one really annoying and unexpected issue

PGError: ERROR: invalid byte sequence for encoding "UTF8": 0xa7 (ActiveRecord::StatementInvalid)
HINT: This error can also happen if the byte sequence does not match the encoding expected by the server, which is controlled by "client_encoding".

The above error was being generated when I was trying to save model objects that had their string and text attributes assigned from data that had been scrapped using http with scRUBYt. After searching on Google the only 'work-around' I found was to use base64 encode and decode when reading and writing to these model attributes / database columns

Given the following migration

	class CreateWidgets < ActiveRecord::Migration
	def self.up
	create_table :widgets do |t|
	t.string :name, :limit => 255, :null => false
	t.timestamps
	end
	end
	def self.down
	drop_table :widgets
	end
	end

view raw gistfile1.rb hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Our model before and then after applying the work-around

	# before the work-around
	class Widget
	end
	# after the work-around
	require 'base64'
	class Widget
	# override the rails attribute (getter)
	def name
	Base64::decode64(self[:name])
	end
	# override the rails attribute (setter)
	def name=(value)
	self[:name] = Base64::encode64(value)
	end
	end

view raw gistfile1.rb hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Resources

• String encoding / Importing Feeds
• override AR default attribute accessors