In Rails how do you render JSON using a view

Question

Suppose you re in your users controller and you want to get a json response for a show request  it d be nice if you could create a file in your views users  dir  named show json and after your users show action is completed  it renders the file   Currently you need to do something along the lines of   def show    user   User find  params  id      respond to do  format      format html     format json        render  json   gt   user to json         end end   But it would be nice if you could just create a show json file which automatically gets rendered like so   def show    user   User find  params  id      respond to do  format      format html     format json   end end   This would save me tons of grief  and would wash away that horribly dirty feeling I get when I render my json in the controller

User · Answer

As others have mentioned you need a users/show.json view, but there are options to consider for the templating language...

ERB

Works out of the box. Great for HTML, but you'll quickly find it's awful for JSON.

RABL

Good solution. Have to add a dependency and learn its DSL.

JSON Builder

Same deal as RABL: Good solution. Have to add a dependency and learn its DSL.

Plain Ruby

Ruby is awesome at generating JSON and there's nothing new to learn as you can call to_json on a Hash or an AR object. Simply register the .rb extension for templates (in an initializer):

ActionView::Template.register_template_handler(:rb, :source.to_proc)

Then create the view users/show.json.rb:

@user.to_json

For more info on this approach see http://railscasts.com/episodes/379-template-handlers

User · Answer

You should be able to do something like this in your respond to block   respond to do  format      format json      render  partial   gt   users show json  end   which will render the template in app views users  show json erb

User · Answer

This is potentially a better option and faster than ERB  https   github com dewski json builder

User · Answer

Im new to RoR this is what I found out  you can directly render a json format  def YOUR METHOD HERE   users   User all   render json   allUsers  users      rendering all users END

User · Answer

Try adding a view users show json erb This should be rendered when you make a request for the JSON format  and you get the added benefit of it being rendered by erb too  so your file could look something like this         first name     lt     user first name to json   gt         last name     lt     user last name to json   gt

User · Answer

Just add show json erb file with the contents   lt     user to json   gt    Sometimes it is useful when you need some extra helper methods that are not available in controller  i e  image path  user avatar  or something to generate additional properties in JSON    lt     user attributes merge  avatar   gt  image path  user avatar   to json   gt

User · Answer

RABL is probably the nicest solution to this that I ve seen if you re looking for a cleaner alternative to ERb syntax  json builder and argonaut  which are other solutions  both seem somewhat outdated and won t work with Rails 3 1 without some patching    RABL is available via a gem or check out the GitHub repository  good examples too  https   github com nesquena rabl

User · Answer

Just to update this answer for the sake of others who happen to end up on this page   In Rails 3  you just need to create a file at views users show json erb  The  user object will be available to the view  just like it would be for html   You don t even need to json anymore   To summarize  it s just    users contoller def show    user   User find  params  id      respond to do  format      format html     format json   end end   and     views users show json erb           name      lt     user name   gt

[ruby-on-rails] In Rails, how do you render JSON using a view?

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