formatting JSON object in rails 3 - ruby-on-rails

Question

I have a rails app has an api for iphone/android clients. I'm doing Message.find(1).to_json(:include => :user) but that adds \ around " to escape it.
How can I prevent to_json from escaping the double quotes?
>> { "a" => "blah" }.to_json
=> "{\"a\":\"blah\"}"
I would like it to be { "a" : "blah" } or { a : "blah" }

Answer 1

It looks like this is actually what you want.
What you are seeing is the string formatted for display (and human readability). It is delimited by double quotes, so the double quotes inside the string are escaped. In reality, the string contains double quotes, but for literal representation, they are escaped. If you stick this into a JSON parser you will find it returns the object you want.
If you were to print this out, you will find that you get the format you want.
irb(main):001:0> puts { "a" => "blah" }.to_json
{"a":"blah"}
=> nil
For further illustration, you could try parsing it. The string you ended up with returns your original object, because JSON is represented by a string. However, attempting to insert the desired content will give you a nasty syntax error or a TypeError. This is because JSON is not a literal in Ruby, whereas in JavaScript it can be used as a literal object. In Ruby it is a representation in the form of a string.
irb(main):002:0> JSON.parse("{\"a\":\"blah\"}")
=> {"a"=>"blah"}
irb(main):003:0> JSON.parse({ "a" : "blah" })
SyntaxError: (irb):3: syntax error, unexpected ':', expecting tASSOC
JSON.parse({ "a" : "blah" })
^
(irb):3: syntax error, unexpected '}', expecting $end
JSON.parse({ "a" : "blah" })
^
irb(main):004:0> JSON.parse({a:"blah"})
TypeError: can't convert Hash into String