Question

I’ve got two models.

Class ModelA < ActiveRecord::Base

  has_many :model_bs

end

Class ModelB < ActiveRecord::Base

  belongs_to :model_a

  def as_json(options = {})
    {
       :whatever => 'hello world'
    }
  end

end

When I call model_a.as_json(:include => :model_b), I want it to return a json which includes all model_bs, which it does, but employing my as_json redefinition, which it does not as it just uses the default one. Is there any way to use my own method rather than the original one? Thanks

Answer 1

In Rails 3, as_json method invokes serializable_hash to obtain the attributes hash. And they share the same ‘options’ parameter. In your case, overwritting serializable_hash would give the expected result.

def serializable_hash(options = {})
  {:whatever => 'hello world'}
end

But, My suggestion is that instead of overwriting the convention, operate on the result of “super”, which is like:

 def serializable_hash(options = {})
  hash = super
  has[:name] = "hello world"
  hash
end