Why is ruby on rails returning null instead of json object

Question

I'm new to Rails so this is really basic and I'm sure I'm missing something simple. I'm trying to send some JSON to an action and get it to return a response in JSON. A simplified version of what I'm trying is below.

The jQuery I'm using:

var request = { 'voter': { 'voter_name': 'John', 'voter_email': '[email protected]'} };

var url = 'http://someip/Voters/create';

$.ajax({
    type: 'POST',
    url: url,
    data: request,
    success: function (data) { alert(data); },
    error: function (data) { alert(data); },
    dataType: 'json'
});

My action:

def create
    @voter = Voter.new(params[:voter])

    logger.info(@voter.to_json)

    render :json => @voter
end

It seems like this should be returning just fine, especially considering the console is showing the Voter object just fine:

Processing VotersController#create (for someip at 2010-08-17 21:19:51) [POST]  
Parameters: {"voter"=>{"voter_name"=>"John", "voter_email"=>"[email protected]"}}
{"voter":{"created_at":null,"updated_at":null,"voter_email":"[email protected]","voter_name":"John"}}
Completed in 11ms (View: 1, DB: 0) | 200 OK [http://someip/Voters/create]

The problem is that my alerts (or any other way I try to look at this data) are all showing me null. No object is being returned. Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

I think you need to convert the instance to JSON before rendering. Like this:

render :json => @voter.to_json

Just like you do in your debug log output.