In Rails, how do you render JSON using a view?

user_68194 0
Viewed 159307

Suppose you're in your users controller and you want to get a json response for a show request, it'd be nice if you could create a file in your views/users/ dir, named show.json and after your users#show action is completed, it renders the file.

Currently you need to do something along the lines of:

def show
  @user = User.find( params[:id] )
  respond_to do |format|
    format.html
    format.json{
      render :json => @user.to_json
    }
  end
end

But it would be nice if you could just create a show.json file which automatically gets rendered like so:

def show
  @user = User.find( params[:id] )
  respond_to do |format|
    format.html
    format.json
  end
end

This would save me tons of grief, and would wash away that horribly dirty feeling I get when I render my json in the controller

rendering templates ruby-on-rails ruby json
9 Answers

You should be able to do something like this in your respond_to block:

respond_to do |format|
    format.json 
    render :partial => "users/show.json"
end

which will render the template in app/views/users/_show.json.erb.

user_2297610

Try adding a view users/show.json.erb This should be rendered when you make a request for the JSON format, and you get the added benefit of it being rendered by erb too, so your file could look something like this

{
    "first_name": "<%= @user.first_name.to_json %>",
    "last_name": "<%= @user.last_name.to_json %>"
}
erik_11910

Just add show.json.erb file with the contents

<%= @user.to_json %>

Sometimes it is useful when you need some extra helper methods that are not available in controller, i.e. image_path(@user.avatar) or something to generate additional properties in JSON:

<%= @user.attributes.merge(:avatar => image_path(@user.avatar)).to_json %>
user_229640

Im new to RoR this is what I found out. you can directly render a json format

def YOUR_METHOD_HERE
  users = User.all
  render json: {allUsers: users} # ! rendering all users
END
user_70345400

I'm just starting out with RoR, my apologies if it's not what you're looking for. I found this and this might be the most up-to-date straightforward method as described in https://guides.rubyonrails.org/v5.1/layouts_and_rendering.html#using-render

2.2.8 Rendering JSON

You don't need to call to_json on the object that you want to render. If you use the :json option, render will automatically call to_json for you.

All you need to do in your action is this

respond_to do |format| 
        format.html
        format.atom
        format.json { render json: @user }
end

And it renders your json response in ./users/1/custom_action.json

user_139420900
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