ActiveSupport overrides #to_json behavior

Question

How to teach ActiveSupport to not override standard "json" gem behavior?

require "rubygems"
gem "json"
require "json"

class Time
  def to_json(options = nil)
    "custom string"
  end
end

hash = { :x => Time.now }

puts hash.to_json # => {"x":custom string}

gem "activesupport"
require "active_support/core_ext/object" # Somewhere into Rails internals

puts Time.now.to_json # => custom string

puts hash.to_json # => {"x":"2011-02-14T16:30:10+05:00"}

Expected: after require "active_support/core_ext/object" I wanna get {"x":custom string} result.

Answer 1

You have to define

class Time
  def to_json(options = nil)
    "custom string"
  end
end

after

gem "activesupport"
require "active_support/core_ext/object" 

code.

Answer 2

How about formatting your Time.now value with strftime like Time.now.strftime("format") for the formatting string please see the Ruby Docs.

Or if you don't really want to format it, just use it as a string call Time.now.to_s

Answer 3

Rails since v2.3.3 switched to #as_json due to some significant reasons. So dance with it.

http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2009/7/20/rails-2-3-3-touching-faster-json-bug-fixes