Confusion with string/symbol keys

[glennfu]

I just upgraded to 0.0.5 to 0.1.2, and noticed some specs failing. With my Story model like:

class Story < ActiveRecord::Base

    serialize :data, ActiveRecord::Coders::NestedHstore` I had a spec like:

    def twitter_title
      data && data["twitterDescription"] ? data["twitterDescription"] : title
    end

end

Then my spec like:

story = create(:story, title: "This is the title", data: {twitterDescription: "Title"})
story.twitter_title.should == "Title"

This was passing before. Now it doesn't pass because story.data["twitterDescription"] == nil and story.data[:twitterDescription] == "Title".

To fix my spec, I need to change it to:

story = create(:story, title: "This is the title", data: {twitterDescription: "Title"})
story.reload
story.twitter_title.should == "Title"

Is this a bug or intended behavior? I'd prefer the previous behavior, where the output was consistent before and after the model had been reloaded. The keys were always strings and I could code for that.

To clarify: if you set a hash with string keys, they stay string keys before and after a model reload. If you set a hash with symbol keys, they'll be symbols until you reload the model and then they'll be strings.