You would get the same results from the tutorial if you called c.user.obj.roles instead of c.user.roles, the object returned by c.user is not a DBIx::Class object, it's a subclass of Catalyst::Authentication::User, in particular if you are using Catalyst::Authentication::Store::DBIx::Class then it's a Catalyst::Authentication::Store::DBIx::Class::User object, and calling ->roles on it returns an array of strings, not objects.