Question

Is there an easy way to return data to web service clients in JSON using Rails?

Answer 1

Rails resource gives a RESTful interface for your model. Let’s see.

Model

class Contact < ActiveRecord::Base   ... end 

Routes

map.resources :contacts 

Controller

class ContactsController < ApplicationController   ...   def show     @contact = Contact.find(params[:id]      respond_to do |format|       format.html        format.xml {render :xml => @contact}       format.js  {render :json => @contact.json}     end   end   ... end 

So this gives you an API interfaces without the need to define special methods to get the type of respond required

Eg.

/contacts/1 # Responds with regular html page  /contacts/1.xml # Responds with xml output of Contact.find(1) and its attributes  /contacts/1.js # Responds with json output of Contact.find(1) and its attributes