Upvoted because I like your solution for pagination and for further information via an :href attribute. However, I don't see a real problem with the way Rails does things because it's "by default" and I think a dev ends up causing a lot of unnecessary trouble for himself by using stock to_json. The more I work with Rails building out a JSON API, the more I realize that .to_json is just another way to "scaffold" - it's not useful in production. :)