How to render json with JBuilder in Rails 3.2

Question

I'm trying to integrate JBuilder into Rails 3.2 project. I've installed the gem, and I've written a JBuilder file at app/views/books/index.json.jbuilder.

Here's my index action:

  def index

    @books = Book.all

    respond_to do |format|
      format.html # index.html.erb
      format.json { render json: @books }
    end
  end

This seems to call the default as_json method of Book to render the response. What do I need to change to tell Rails to use my JBuilder template instead?

Answer 1

Remove the block you're passing to format.json. You're causing it to ignore your jbuilder file and instead return the result of json: @books as a response. If you leave the block out:

respond_to do |format|
  format.html # index.html.erb
  format.json # no block here
end

Then Rails will fall back to its default handling of the response and look for a template in your view directory, it'll find the jbuilder file and render that as the response.