Rails return JSON serialized attribute with_indifferent_access

Question

I previously had:

serialize :params, JSON

But this would return the JSON and convert hash key symbols to strings. I want to reference the hash

Answer 1

I ended up using a variation on bimsapi's solution that you can use not only with simple un-nested JSON but any JSON.

Once this is loaded...

module JsonHelper

  class JsonWithIndifferentAccess
    def self.load(str)
      self.indifferent_access JSON.load(str)
    end

    def self.dump(obj)
      JSON.dump(obj)
    end

    private

      def self.indifferent_access(obj)
        if obj.is_a? Array
          obj.map!{|o| self.indifferent_access(o)}
        elsif obj.is_a? Hash
          obj.with_indifferent_access
        else
          obj
        end
      end
  end

end

then instead of calling

JSON.load(http_response)

you just call

JsonHelper::JsonWithIndifferentAccess.load(http_response)

Does the same thing but all the nested hashes are indifferent access.

Should serve you well but think a little before making it your default approach for all parsing as massive JSON payloads will add significant ruby operations on top of the native JSON parser which is optimised in C and more fully designed for performance.