How to properly wrap a JSON database result within an object - php

Question

I created an API for my various SPA's using a Laravel resource controller that works like a charm. While BackboneJS has no problem with the default JSON response, EmberJS expects the result wrapped in a singular and plural named JSON object depending on if it's fetching a single model or a collection of models.
What I already know
Convert the JSON result to an array wrap it and convert it back to JSON.
Wrapping every result in an object.
Change the result comming from the database call to an array with setFetchMode(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);.
Question
How to properly (using the cheapest process) create the wrapped JSON responses, so without converting the results back and forth between JSON, Arrays or Objects?
A snippit from the Laravel resource controller:
<?php
class ResourceController extends Controller {
...
/**
* Display a listing of the resource.
*
* #return Response
*/
public function index() {
return Model::all();
}
/**
* Display the specified resource.
*
* #param int $id
* #return Response
*/
public function show($id) {
return Model::find($id);
}
...
}

Answer 1

This will wrap the original Eloquent database result for a Laravel application with a database configured as "fetch" => PDO::FETCH_CLASS. It creates a new object of Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Collection and wraps the Eloquent result in a models property. This way it's formatted properly for using it with Ember data without any conversions.
/**
* Display a listing of the resource.
*
* #return Response
*/
public function index() {
$index = new Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Collection;
$index['models'] = Model::all();
return $index;
}

Answer 2

You can do that with following structure. Always, return your json response in wrapped format like(I assumed you have User model);
{
"user": [
{"name": "Hüseyin"},
{"surname": "BABAL"},
{"title": "Software Developer"}
]
}
This is suitable for ember.js. For backbone.js, you need to do some extra simple job like following;
var User = Backbone.Collection.extend({
model: User,
url: '/api/userInfo',
parse: function(response) {
return response.user;
});
}
});
By doing this, you will only one format rest service, and you just need to do some extra job for only backbone.js
Update:
Think about index action, you can do that like;
public function index() {
return Response::json(array("user" => Model::all()));
}
Result will be wraped with "user", you can use response as json on frontend. The result will be;
{
"user": [
{...},
{...}
]
}