Cancan：json的能力等级

Question

I have Rails 3 application with Cancan 1.6.9 for authorization. I want to convert Ability class to JSON. Here is the my Ability class.

# encoding: utf-8

module Ability

  def self.for(guest)
    guest ||= User.new # guest user (not logged in)

    if guest.admin?
      AdminAbility.new(guest)
    elsif guest.assurer?
      AssurerAbility.new(guest)
    end
  end

  ##
  # Assurer
  class AssurerAbility
    include CanCan::Ability

    def initialize(user)
      cannot :manage, User
      can :read, ExchangeRate
    end
  end

  ##
  # Admin
  class AdminAbility
    include CanCan::Ability

    def initialize(user)
      can :manage, User
      can :manage, ExchangeRate
    end

  end

end

When I run Ability.for(User.last).to_json I get following errors:

ActiveSupport::JSON::Encoding::CircularReferenceError: object references itself
    from /home/user/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p392@rails-3.2.13/gems/activesupport-3.2.13/lib/active_support/json/encoding.rb:75:in `check_for_circular_references'
    from /home/user/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p392@rails-3.2.13/gems/activesupport-3.2.13/lib/active_support/json/encoding.rb:46:in `encode'
    from /home/user/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p392@rails-3.2.13/gems/activesupport-3.2.13/lib/active_support/json/encoding.rb:246:in `block in encode_json'
    from /home/user/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p392@rails-3.2.13/gems/activesupport-3.2.13/lib/active_support/json/encoding.rb:246:in `each'
    from /home/user/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p392@rails-3.2.13/gems/activesupport-3.2.13/lib/active_support/json/encoding.rb:246:in `map'
    from /home/user/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p392@rails-3.2.13/gems/activesupport-3.2.13/lib/active_support/json/encoding.rb:246:in `encode_json'
    from /home/user/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p392@rails-3.2.13/gems/activesupport-3.2.13/lib/active_support/json/encoding.rb:48:in `block in encode'
    from /home/user/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p392@rails-3.2.13/gems/activesupport-3.2.13/lib/active_support/json/encoding.rb:77:in `check_for_circular_references'
    from /home/user/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p392@rails-3.2.13/gems/activesupport-3.2.13/lib/active_support/json/encoding.rb:46:in `encode'
    from /home/user/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p392@rails-3.2.13/gems/activesupport-3.2.13/lib/active_support/json/encoding.rb:246:in `block in encode_json'
    from /home/user/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p392@rails-3.2.13/gems/activesupport-3.2.13/lib/active_support/json/encoding.rb:246:in `each'
    from /home/user/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p392@rails-3.2.13/gems/activesupport-3.2.13/lib/active_support/json/encoding.rb:246:in `map'
    from /home/user/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p392@rails-3.2.13/gems/activesupport-3.2.13/lib/active_support/json/encoding.rb:246:in `encode_json'
    from /home/user/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p392@rails-3.2.13/gems/activesupport-3.2.13/lib/active_support/json/encoding.rb:48:in `block in encode'
    from /home/user/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p392@rails-3.2.13/gems/activesupport-3.2.13/lib/active_support/json/encoding.rb:77:in `check_for_circular_references'
    from /home/user/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p392@rails-3.2.13/gems/activesupport-3.2.13/lib/active_support/json/encoding.rb:46:in `encode'
... 19 levels...
    from /home/user/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p392@rails-3.2.13/gems/activesupport-3.2.13/lib/active_support/json/encoding.rb:46:in `encode'
    from /home/user/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p392@rails-3.2.13/gems/activesupport-3.2.13/lib/active_support/json/encoding.rb:246:in `block in encode_json'
    from /home/user/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p392@rails-3.2.13/gems/activesupport-3.2.13/lib/active_support/json/encoding.rb:246:in `each'
    from /home/user/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p392@rails-3.2.13/gems/activesupport-3.2.13/lib/active_support/json/encoding.rb:246:in `map'
    from /home/user/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p392@rails-3.2.13/gems/activesupport-3.2.13/lib/active_support/json/encoding.rb:246:in `encode_json'
    from /home/user/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p392@rails-3.2.13/gems/activesupport-3.2.13/lib/active_support/json/encoding.rb:48:in `block in encode'
    from /home/user/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p392@rails-3.2.13/gems/activesupport-3.2.13/lib/active_support/json/encoding.rb:77:in `check_for_circular_references'
    from /home/user/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p392@rails-3.2.13/gems/activesupport-3.2.13/lib/active_support/json/encoding.rb:46:in `encode'
    from /home/user/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p392@rails-3.2.13/gems/activesupport-3.2.13/lib/active_support/json/encoding.rb:31:in `encode'
    from /home/user/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p392@rails-3.2.13/gems/activesupport-3.2.13/lib/active_support/core_ext/object/to_json.rb:16:in `to_json'
    enter code here

And when I run Ability.for(User.last).as_json I get result. But it's not valid JSON result.

{"rules"=>[#<CanCan::Rule:0xaf5e81c @match_all=false, @base_behavior=false, @actions=[:manage], @subjects=[User(id: integer, password_digest: string, created_at: datetime, updated_at: datetime, uic: string, role: string, name: string, register_no: string)], @conditions={}, @block=nil>, #<CanCan::Rule:0xaf5e72c @match_all=false, @base_behavior=true, @actions=[:read], @subjects=[ExchangeRate(id: integer, data: float, date: date, created_at: datetime, updated_at: datetime)], @conditions={}, @block=nil>]}

Any idea?

Answer 1

TL;DR: Implement self.as_json method in your models and explicitly specify which fields to convert to JSON. After this you will be able to run Ability.for(User.last).to_json without errors.

---

Complete explanation: let's look at the structure of Ability as seen from source :

• Ability instance has a field named @rules .
• Each rule has a field named @subject which is a flattened ActiveRecord class ( User , ExchangeRate etc). Yes, class , not class instance.
• @subject gets converted to JSON and CircularReferenceError appears. Why?

The problem is, converting User or ExchangeRate class to JSON is not a good idea because their structure may be very complicated. For instance, if you try running User.as_json , the result might be like this . Probably one of User 's fields references back to User and you get CircularReferenceError . To avoid this, specify which fields should be included into JSON representation of User (the same is applied for ExchangeRate ):

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  #...
  def self.as_json(options = {})
    { "class" => "User" }
  end
end