Rails looking for template for JSON requests

Question

In my routes.rb I have:

resources :workouts

In my workouts controller I have:

def show
  respond_to do |format|
    format.html
    format.json { render :json => "Success" }
  end
end

But when I go to /workouts/1.json, I receive the following:

Template is missing

Missing template workouts/show, application/show with {:locale=>[:en], :formats=>[:json], :handlers=>[:erb, :builder, :coffee]}. Searched in: * "/home/rails/app/views"

Which appears to show that the format is what it should be but it's still searching for a view. This same code functions in other controllers with identical setups just fine. Also, going to /workouts/1 for the html view seems to work just fine, though it also renders the html view properly when the format.html is removed.

Answer 1

Looks at the source code of render

      elsif options.include?(:json)
        json = options[:json]
        json = ActiveSupport::JSON.encode(json) unless json.is_a?(String)
        json = "#{options[:callback]}(#{json})" unless options[:callback].blank?
        response.content_type ||= Mime::JSON
        render_for_text(json, options[:status])

Pay attention to the third line. If the value of :json is a string, render won't call to_json automatically for this value.

So the value remains as string and render will go on to search template.

To fix, supply a valid hash even for trying purpose.

format.json { render :json => {:message => "Success"} }