Question

The default way to output JSON in rails is some thing like:
Code:
render :json => friends.to_json(:only => [:username, :avatar_file_name, :id ])

Output

{"friends" : 
  [{"user": 
    {"avatar_file_name": "image1.jpg", "username": "user1", "id": 1}},
   {"user": 
    {"avatar_file_name": "image2.jpg", "username": "user2", "id": 2}},
   {"user":
    {"avatar_file_name": "image3.jpg", "username": "user3", "id": 3}}
  ]}

But i want something like:

{"friends" : 
    {"user": [
      {"avatar_file_name": "image1.jpg", "username": "user1", "id": 1},
      {"avatar_file_name": "image2.jpg", "username": "user2", "id": 2},
      {"avatar_file_name": "image3.jpg", "username": "user3", "id": 3}
    ]}
}

The class is specified by the array name.
Last.fm also uses this syntax see Last.fm ‘API-user.getfriends’

Answer 1

The solution to this problem is commenting the line
ActiveRecord::Base.include_root_in_json = true
in initializers/new_rails_defaults.rb

Or setting ActiveRecord::Base.include_root_in_json to false.