How to generate an XML list of certain fields from my database in Ruby on Rails?

Question

I need to supply data from my Ruby on Rails database to a jquery grid plugin. At the moment, I'm doing it like this:

@notes = current_user.notes.all
respond_to do |format|
  format.xml  { render :xml => @notes }
end

But I only want to display certain fields in the grid, so I need to change the code to only send specified fields from the model. What is the easiest way to do this? Thanks for reading.

Answer 1

you can use XML Builder.

Taken from: http://danengle.us/2009/05/generating-custom-xml-for-your-rails-app/

respond_to do |format|
  format.html # index.html.erb
  format.xml # index.xml.builder
end

# index.xml builder contents
xml.instruct!
xml.posts do
  @posts.each do |post|
    xml.post do
      xml.title post.title
      xml.body post.body
      xml.published_at post.published_at
      xml.comments do
        post.comments.each do |comment|
          xml.comment do
            xml.body comment.body
          end
        end
      end
    end
  end
end

Another possibility is to override to_xml in your notes model as posted in the comments of the linked site above.