Deprecation Guide for Record toJSON usage

Deprecates the built in record.toJSON

Previously users could use record.toJSON to get a simple JSON serialization of a record instance by either calling the method directly or using JSON.stringify(record).

This method used the now deprecated -json serializer to create this JSON representation of the record instead of the user supplied serializer. In addition to the surprising use of a different serializer, this creates an unnecessary dependency on the JSONSerializer for applications that may not otherwise have imported and uses this serializer.

We have deprecated EmberData's own implementation of this method in favor of users implementing their own (or refactoring away).

To clear this deprecation users may call record.serialize() or implement their own toJSON instead. The simplest 1:1 refactor is to import a serializer and define a toJSON method that returns the serialized data from the model, but users may want to consider implementing a custom "serialize" method that outputs relevant data.

An example of the simple refactor is below:

before

  //app/models/post.js
  import Model from '@ember-data/model';

  export default class Post extends Model {};

  //other app code
  const record = store.peekRecord('post');
  // uses the default serializer, will have a deprecation warning
  const output = record.toJSON();

after

  //app/models/post.js
  import Model from '@ember-data/model';
  import { JSONAPISerializer } from '@ember-data/serializers';

  export default class Post extends Model {
    toJSON(options) {
      /* Create a JSON object with relevant data by either:
          - iterating the attributes / relationships of the record into a POJO
          - calling this.serialize and then munge output into the desired shape
      */
    }
  };

  //other app code
  const record = store.peekRecord('post');
  // uses the default serializer
  const output = record.toJSON();