Question

I am using Ruby on Rails 3 and I would like, in some way, to convert a string to_json and to_xml.

Just to know, I need to return that string in a Rack method in this way:

[404, {"Content-type" => "application/json"}, ["Bad request"]]
# or
[404, {"Content-type" => "application/xml"}, ["Bad request"]]

However what I need is only to convert that string to_json and to_xml? How is it possible do that?

Answer 1

Sometimes you must add a require 'json' in your file (after installing the gem, JSON implementation for Ruby ) and do:

JSON.parse("Bad request").to_json   

or you could try:

ActiveSupport::JSON.encode("Bad request").to_json

But in your case maybe the best approach is respond correctly:

respond_to do |format|
  format.html # index.html.erb
  format.xml  { render :xml => @somearray }
  format.json  { render :json => @somearray }
end

Alternatively you could do:

  mystring_json = '{"bar":"foo"}'
  [404, {'Content-Type' => 'application/json'}, [mysrting_json]] #json stuff
  mystring_xml = '<?xml><bar>foo</bar>'
  [404, {'Content-Type' => 'application/xml'}, [mysrting_xml]]  #xml stuff