How do I build a JSON object?

Question

Currently I build a JSON object by doing:

@users = User.all  @users.each do |user|   @userlist << {     :id => user.id,     :fname => user.fname,     :lname => user.lname,     :photo => user.profile_pic.url(:small)   } end 

My challenge is I now want to include records from the @contacts table that have a different set of fields than the User model.

I tried doing

@users = User.all @contacts = current_user.contacts @users << @contacts 

But that did not work. What's the best way to combine two similar models into one JSON object?

Answer 1

json = User.all( :include => :contacts).to_json( :include => :contacts ) 

Update

Sorry, let me give a more complete answer for what you're doing...

@users = User.all( :include => :contacts ) @userlist = @users.map do |u|   { :id => u.id, :fname => u.fname, :lname => u.lname, :photo => u.profile_pic.url(:small), :contacts => u.contacts } end  json = @userlist.to_json 

Another Update

Ok, so just forget me - I was having a bad day and totally missed the point of your question. You want some JSON that includes two unrelated sets of data. All the users, and the contacts just for the current user.

You want to create a new hash for that then, something like this...

@users = User.all @userlist = @users.map do |u|   { :id => u.id, :fname => u.fname, :lname => u.lname, :photo => u.profile_pic.url(:small) } end  json = { :users => @userlist, :contacts => current_user.contacts }.to_json 

Answer 2

  @userlist = @users.map do |u|     u.attributes.merge!(:contacts=>current_user.contacts)   end   json = @userlist.to_json