NOTE: Jsonit is no longer maintained. We recommend you use Jbuilder instead. It offers similar functionality.

Jsonit

Jsonit provides a way to quickly construct handcrafted json documents. Jsonit requires objects to respond to #to_json. It will attempt to load the json gem if this is not the case.

Installation

gem install jsonit

Usage

require 'json'    # Jsonit expects a #to_json method on object.
require 'jsonit'

# a simple object
Jsonit::Builder.new do |json|
  json.foo "bar"
end.to_json #=> {"foo":"bar"}

# nested object
Jsonit::Builder.new do |json|
  json.foo do
    json.bar "baz"
  end

  json.alpha do
    json.bravo do
      json.charlie "delta"
    end
  end
end.to_json #=> {"foo":{"bar":"baz"},"alpha":{"bravo":{"charlie":"delta"}}}

# arrays
Jsonit::Builder.new do |json|
  json.first [1, 2, 3]

  json.second [1, 2, 3] do |itm|
    json.value itm
  end
end.to_json #=> {"first":[1, 2, 3],"second":[{"value":1},{"value":2},{"value":3}]}

Rails 3

Jsonit can be used with rails 3.

In app/helpers/photos_helper.rb

class PhotosHelper
  def photos
    Photo.all
  end
end

In app/controllers/photos_controller.rb

class PhotosController < ApplicationController
  respond_to :json
end

In app/views/photos/index.json.jsonit

json.ok true
json.data photos do |photo|
  photo.title    photo.title
  photo.location url_for(photo)
end

Result will be something like:

{
  "ok": true,
  "data": [
        {
          "title": "My First Photo",
          "location": "http://www.example.com/photos/1.json"
        }
  ]
}

Sinatra

Jsonit can be used with Sinatra.

In your Gemfile:

gem 'json'
gem 'jsonit'

In views/index.jsonit:

json.foo "bar"

In your app:

class App < Sinatra::Base
  get "/" do
    jsonit :index
  end
end

Padrino

Jsonit can be used with Padrino.

In your Gemfile:

gem 'json'
gem 'jsonit'

In app/views/photos/index.json.jsonit:

json.photos photos do |photo|
  json.title    photo.title
  json.location url_for(:photos, :show, :photo_id => photo.id)
end

In your controller:

MyApp.controllers :photos do
  helpers do
    def photos
      Photos.all
    end
  end

  get :index, :provides => :json do
    render :'photos/index'
  end

  get :show, :with => :photo_id, :provides => :json do
    render :'photos/show'
  end
end

Project status

Jsonit is currently under active development.

jsonit

Development