How to convert ActiveRecord results into an array of hashes

Question

I have an ActiveRecord result of a find operation:

tasks_records = TaskStoreStatus.find(
  :all,
  :select => "task_id, store_name, store_region",
  :conditions => ["task_status = ? and store_id = ?", "f", store_id]
)

Now I want to convert this results into an array of hashes like this:

[0] ->  { :task_d => 10, :store_name=> "Koramanagala", :store_region=> "India" }

[1] -> { :task_d => 10, :store_name=> "Koramanagala", :store_region=> "India" }

[2] ->  { :task_d => 10, :store_name=> "Koramanagala", :store_region=> "India" }

so that I will be able to iterate through the array and to add more elements to hashes and later to convert the result into JSON for my API response. How can I do this?

Answer 1

as_json

You should use as_json method which converts ActiveRecord objects to Ruby Hashes despite its name

tasks_records = TaskStoreStatus.all
tasks_records = tasks_records.as_json

# You can now add new records and return the result as json by calling `to_json`

tasks_records << TaskStoreStatus.last.as_json
tasks_records << { :task_id => 10, :store_name => "Koramanagala", :store_region => "India" }
tasks_records.to_json

serializable_hash

You can also convert any ActiveRecord objects to a Hash with serializable_hash and you can convert any ActiveRecord results to an Array with to_a, so for your example :

tasks_records = TaskStoreStatus.all
tasks_records.to_a.map(&:serializable_hash)

And if you want an ugly solution for Rails prior to v2.3

JSON.parse(tasks_records.to_json) # please don't do it