How to build a JSON response made up of multiple models in Rails

Question

First, the desired result

I have User and Item models. I\'d like to build a JSON response that looks like this:

{
  \"use         


        

Answer 1

Working answer #2 To avoid the issue of your json being "escaped", build up the data structure by hand, then call to_json on it once. It can get a little wordy, but you can do it all in the controller, or abstract it out to the individual models as to_hash or something.

def observe
  respond_to do |format|
    format.js do
      render :json => {
        :user => {:username => current_user.username, :foo => current_user.foo, :bar => current_user.bar},
        :items => @items.collect{ |i| {:id => i.id, :name => i.name, :zim => i.zim, :gir => i.gir} }
      }
    end
  end
end