Creating JSON object headers/structure in Rails

Question

I have the following method in my Rails app which works very well. Basically, I grab a bunch of objects (event, captable and shareholders) and just merge them into one @snapshot object and then convert that to_json and put it in the database.

def save_captable_snapshot(transaction)
    
    @transaction = transaction
    @event = @transaction.event 
    @captable = @transaction.captable
    @shareholders = @captable.company.shareholders
    
    @snapshot = []
    @snapshot.push(@captable, @event, @shareholders)
        
    @event.update_attribute(:snapshot, @event.snapshot = @snapshot.to_json)  
    
  end

If I spit out an @event.snapshot in a view, I get the following JSON.

[
   {
      "id":27,
      "total_stocks_in_company":"100.0",
      "version":1,
      "name":"cap table ",
      "company_id":20,
      "created_at":"2018-10-25T18:35:13.413Z",
      "updated_at":"2018-10-25T18:35:54.431Z"
   },
   {
      "status_locked":null,
      "id":45,
      "price_per_share":"100.0",
      "total_company_stocks_after_event":"100.0",
      "name":"funding",
      "date":"2018-10-25",
      "currency":"",
      "valuation":"10000.0",
      "created_at":"2018-10-25T18:35:19.273Z",
      "updated_at":"2018-10-25T18:35:54.447Z",
      "captable_id":27,
      "company_id":20,
      "snapshot":null
   },
   [
      {
         "id":0,
         "shareholder":"Bob",
         "name":"Bob",
         "number_of_stocks":null,
         "company_id":20,
         "created_at":"2018-10-25T18:33:20.770Z",
         "updated_at":"2018-10-25T18:33:20.770Z",
         "ownership_percentage":null,
         "email":"",
         "telephone":""
      },
      {
         "id":48,
         "shareholder":"Peter",
         "name":"Peter",
         "number_of_stocks":"100.0",
         "company_id":20,
         "created_at":"2018-10-25T18:33:33.109Z",
         "updated_at":"2018-10-25T18:35:54.437Z",
         "ownership_percentage":"1.0",
         "email":"",
         "telephone":""
      },
      {
         "id":49,
         "shareholder":"BobJane",
         "name":"BobJane",
         "number_of_stocks":null,
         "company_id":20,
         "created_at":"2018-10-25T18:33:45.695Z",
         "updated_at":"2018-10-25T18:33:45.695Z",
         "ownership_percentage":null,
         "email":"",
         "telephone":""
      }
   ]
]

As you can see, there is no formatting on the object, so working with it is cumbersome. What I'd like to achieve is something like the following (pseudo-code).

{
   "captable":{
      "id":2,
      "name":"A Great Captable"
   },
   "event":{
      "id":24,
      "name":25,
      "number of stocks":3040
   },
   "shareholders":[
      {
         "id":345,
         "name":"Bob",
         "ownership percentage":0.45
      },
      {
         "id":345,
         "name":"Bob",
         "ownership percentage":0.45
      },
      {
         "id":345,
         "name":"Bob",
         "ownership percentage":0.45
      }
   ]
}

I've tried a bunch of different things but cannot get the three "headings" into the JSON object successfully - the three headings or sections being captable, event and then each shareholder.

How would I best set up an empty object and then push in my three objects into the object before saving it to the database?

Answer 1

Use hash instead of Array:

@snapshot = {
    captable: @captable,
    evet: @event, 
    shareholders: @shareholders
}