How to pass an entry's Matrix fields as JSON?

Question

Have a JSON object that I'm trying to pass to my Javascript through a script tag in my markup like so:

<script type="text/json" id="json-data">
{
  "terms": "{{ entry.termsAgreement }}",
  "sectionHeader": {{ entry.formSection }}
}

However, I'm getting an error that says:

Object of class Craft\ElementCriteriaModel could not be converted to string.

formSection is a Matrix field. How can I pass this along to have access to it in Javascript? I tried

JSON.stringify({{ entry.formSection }})

but no luck.

Thanks.

Answer 1

I'd strongly recommend looking at the Element API plugin for this.

If you're dead set against that, there are other examples of how to pull out section data in Craft for rolling your own JSON.

For Matrix it'd be no different that if your were pulling Matrix data out to be output in HTML instead of JSON (looping through blocks, grabbing fields, etc). Lots of examples in the Matrix templating docs.

The error you're getting is because when you simply output entry.myMatrixHandle, you're technically given back an ElementCriteriaModel object and the Element API plugin tries to convert that to a string to display in the JSON data and it doesn't know how to convert that object to a string.