You can use eval to rebuild the data. A better way to store the data is to use freeze and thaw.

use Storable qw/freeze thaw/;
use MIME::Base64 qw/encode_base64 decode_base64/;
my $data_ref = {
                 a => 'xx',
                 b => 42
};

my $encoded = encode_base64( freeze($data_ref) );
# store $encoded in a database

# restore data
$data_ref = thaw( decode_base64($encoded) );
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