2.3.2 ActiveResource JSON doesn't send parameters with root node

Here's the applicable code within ActiveResource::Base, which makes it pretty obvious what's going on:

    # Returns the serialized string representation of the resource in the configured
    # serialization format specified in ActiveResource::Base.format. The options
    # applicable depend on the configured encoding format.
    def encode(options={})
      case self.class.format
        when ActiveResource::Formats[:xml]
          self.class.format.encode(attributes, {:root => self.class.element_name}.merge(options))
        else
          self.class.format.encode(attributes, options)
      end
    end

You can fix this by adding
ActiveRecord::Base.include_root_in_json = true

in a initializer. Hope this will be default in Rails3

Nevermind the above - it's for ActiveRECORD. This problem does exist in ActiveResource.

Patched it.

Added an ActiveResource::Base option to include_root_in_json just like ActiveRecord.

Looked over Joe's patch. Looks clean.

thanks for this patch joe. i'm working with a big team for migrating a high-traffic website from cold fusion to ruby on rails, and for the first phase, we'll be doing a rails front end / cf backend, with RESTful communication between the two over JSON. Just today i was playing around with ActiveResource over :json and ran into this issue.

any idea on when this might make it into a rails release?

No problem, I wrote this patch for a client and it's part of a production application. We haven't had any problems with it so far, but I'm sure the Rails 3 guys have lots in mind for the ActiveResource stuff which is why this has probably been looked over.

I actually have this patch in the form of a rails initializer/monkey patch as well. If you need that just let me know.

Thanks Joe, would you send over your monkey patch? either post it here or email me at moonmaster9000 at gee mail

We also had an issue where rails 2.3.3, by default, returns json with a root node (caused by setting ActiveRecord::Base.include_root_in_json = true in config/initializers/new_rails_defaults.rb). ActiveResource over :json (unlike ActiveResource over :xml) expects a json response without a root node, and doesn't have any logic to handle the situation where the ActiveResource attributes are encapsulated in the root node in the json response.

It's, of course, not the biggest deal (we just set ActiveRecord::Base.include_root_in_json = false in the app sending json representations of ActiveRecord objects), but it is a bit odd now that we have one app sending ActiveRecord responses as json without a root node, and the other app sending ActiveResource :json CREATE/PUT messages with a root node.

I've edited the json_format.rb file to detect and load the json response appropriately when the model name is the root of the response object. Pretty simple solution, but I hope an "elegant & universal" solution makes it to the core so I don't have to remember to keep patching my ActiveResource installations everywhere :-)

+1 verified on 2-3-stable, but patch failed to apply, here's a patch for 2-3-stable.

-1 on existing patch, fails on 2-3-stable and on master, on master it fails with:

error: activeresource/test/base_test.rb: No such file or directory

This is something i have been patching myself for a while too, definitely a requirement as far as i concern

Anyone know if this patch will be applied to Rails 3?

Patch for master here

(from [7cd1d37a51f5f53f8fc1360f886d26cabf12d969]) Reuse Active Model serialization in Active Resource. [#2584 2.3.2 ActiveResource JSON doesn't send parameters with root node state:committed]

Signed-off-by: Jeremy Kemper jeremy@bitsweat.net
http://github.com/rails/rails/commit/7cd1d37a51f5f53f8fc1360f886d26...