Returning an Eloquent model as JSON in Laravel 4

Question

How do you return an Eloquent model to the browser as JSON? What is the difference between the two methods below? Both seems to work.

#1:

Answer 1

In #1 you first convert your Eloquent to an array, and then you convert it to JSON, which seems a bit redundant.

With that in mind, I'd go with #2 if you're returning the JSON to the caller.

Also note that, in L4, whenever an Eloquent model is cast to a string it will be automatically converted to JSON. Hence, you can do like in this example from the documentation to return JSON data directly from your route:

Route::get('users', function()
{
    return User::all();
});

For more information, see http://four.laravel.com/docs/eloquent#converting-to-arrays-or-json