How to customize to_json response in Rails 3

Question

I am using respond_with and everything is hooked up right to get data correctly. I want to customize the returned json, xml and

Answer 1

You can override as_json in your model. Something like:

class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
  def as_json(options = {})
    {
      attribute: self.attribute, # and so on for all you want to include
      images:    self.images,    # then do the same `as_json` method for Image
      foo:       self.really_cool_method
    }
  end
end

And Rails takes care of the rest when using respond_with. not entirely sure what options gets set to, but probably the options you give to respond_with (:include, :only and so on)