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custom_marshal_dump_load

🛠️ Customize Marshaling with marshal_dump and marshal_load​

Implementing marshal_dump and marshal_load on your class lets you control exactly what gets serialized and how it’s reconstructed. This is ideal for excluding transient data or transforming attributes during serialization. Define marshal_dump to return a serializable representation and marshal_load to restore state from that data.

class Session
  attr_accessor :user_id, :token, :temp_cache

  def initialize(user_id, token)
    @user_id = user_id
    @token = token
    @temp_cache = {}  # runtime-only data
  end

  # Only persist user_id and token
  def marshal_dump
    { user_id: @user_id, token: @token }
  end

  def marshal_load(data)
    @user_id = data[:user_id]
    @token = data[:token]
    @temp_cache = {}  # reinitialize runtime data
  end
end

session = Session.new(42, "abc123")
serialized = Marshal.dump(session)
restored = Marshal.load(serialized)
puts restored.temp_cache  # => {}