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:

{
  "user":
    {"username":"Bob!","foo":"whatever","bar":"hello!"},

  "items": [
    {"id":1, "name":"one", "zim":"planet", "gir":"earth"},
    {"id":2, "name":"two", "zim":"planet", "gir":"mars"}
  ]
}

However, my User and Item model have more attributes than just those. I found a way to get this to work, but beware, it's not pretty... Please help...

Update

The next section contains the original question. The last section shows the new solution.

---

My hacks

home_controller.rb

class HomeController < ApplicationController

  def observe
    respond_to do |format|
      format.js { render :json => Observation.new(current_user, @items).to_json }
    end
  end

end

observation.rb

# NOTE: this is not a subclass of ActiveRecord::Base
# this class just serves as a container to aggregate all "observable" objects
class Observation
  attr_accessor :user, :items

  def initialize(user, items)
    self.user = user
    self.items = items
  end

  # The JSON needs to be decoded before it's sent to the `to_json` method in the home_controller otherwise the JSON will be escaped...
  # What a mess!
  def to_json
    {
      :user => ActiveSupport::JSON.decode(user.to_json(:only => :username, :methods => [:foo, :bar])),
      :items => ActiveSupport::JSON.decode(auctions.to_json(:only => [:id, :name], :methods => [:zim, :gir]))
    }
  end
end

---

Look Ma! No more hacks!

Override as_json instead

The ActiveRecord::Serialization#as_json docs are pretty sparse. Here's the brief:

as_json(options = nil) 
  [show source]

For more information on to_json vs as_json, see the accepted answer for Overriding to_json in Rails 2.3.5

The code sans hacks

user.rb

class User < ActiveRecord::Base

  def as_json(options)
    options = { :only => [:username], :methods => [:foo, :bar] }.merge(options)
    super(options)
  end

end

item.rb

class Item < ActiveRecord::Base

  def as_json(options)
    options = { :only => [:id, name], :methods => [:zim, :gir] }.merge(options)
    super(options)
  end

end

home_controller.rb

class HomeController < ApplicationController

  def observe
    @items = Items.find(...)
    respond_to do |format|
      format.js do
        render :json => {
          :user => current_user || {},
          :items => @items
        }
      end
    end
  end

end

Answer 1

EDITED to use as_json instead of to_json. See How to override to_json in Rails? for a detailed explanation. I think this is the best answer.

You can render the JSON you want in the controller without the need for the helper model.

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

Make sure ActiveRecord::Base.include_root_in_json is set to false or else you'll get a 'user' attribute inside of 'user'. Unfortunately, it looks like Arrays do not pass options down to each element, so the collect is necessary.