Can I globaly change the output format types ?

[kidpollo]

Hi!

I am getting

"last_activity_at": "2012-08-21T22:29:38Z"

For date time fields. Is there a way to change the output format fro all DateTime attributes? What If I want a format like "2012-08-21 22:29:38 UTC" but for all DateTimes in all my templates.

Could it be done per class type?

Thaks

[nesquena]

On dates and times and all that, RABL is just calling to_json on the date or time. In JSON output, the spec recommends http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601 which is the format being used by default. To change away from that, I would recommend perhaps a helper or a more manual approach using a partial:

# _date.rabl
node @attribute do 
  @date.some_special_format
end

and then:

partial("date.json.rabl", :locals => { :attribute => :created_at, :date => @object.created_at }

Purely aircoded so it may not work exactly, but the gist is there. Also you could overwrite to_json on Time:

class Time
  def to_json
    some_other_format
  end
end

[databyte]

Closing. If still a question or problem, please reopen.

[knu]

When using oj with rabl, you'd better override as_json instead of to_json, because Oj.dump tries as_json prior to to_json.
For example, the ActiveSupport::TimeWithZone class has as_json defined, so overriding its to_json method does not affect how Oj dumps instances of the class. You need to override as_json instead.

class ActiveSupport::TimeWithZone
  def as_json
    iso8601(6)
  end
end

It took me awhile to find this, so I thought it's worth sharing it here.