I'm creating an AuditLog observer that watches over several models.
I'd like the observer to have an after_create, which creates a JSON object that is stored in a database column. It will contain data like {photoid:123, photoname: "asdasd", creator_id: "asdasd"} etc...
In Rails, how do I create this type of JSON object and then how do I insert it into the DB along with other non-JSON fields?
Thanks
Current versions of rails support json serialisation out of the box. Define your field as a string (or text) in the migration and then:
class Foo < ActiveRecord::Base serialize :field, JSON end bar = Foo.new bar.field = [1,2,3] bar.save First, definitely check out ActiveRecord serialize and see if it does what you need: http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveRecord/Base.html#method-c-serialize
However, if you need JSON specifically (serialize uses YAML by default), then you can always fake it by hand.
You can simply build a hash in Ruby and then call to_json on it before assigning it to your model attribute.
data = { 'photoid' => 123, 'photoname' => "asdasd", 'creator_id' => "asdasd" } myrecord.stored_data = data.to_json myrecord.save Take a look at this: http://github.com/laserlemon/vestal_versions
If it's not what you're looking for, it will at least show you it's done.