SailsJs/Express removing nested array `res.send()`

I'm using SailsJs (which is Express based) to send an JSON object with an array. For some reason, when I load the API in my browser, the array is not sent.

The code that sends the object is here:

exports.RESTifySend = function(res, objects) {
    return RESTService.RESTify(objects).then(function(RESTedObjects) {
        console.log("SENDING: ", RESTedObjects);
        return res.json(RESTedObjects, 200); // I've also tried res.send()
    }, function() {
        res.send(500);
    });
};

The logging statement SENDING: ... outputs:

SENDING: {
    id: 'IKIlrgXhp6',
    messages: [{
        user: null, 
        text: 'trest', 
        sentAt: undefined 
    }]
}

The RESTifyService is just a small framework I built to remove object attributes that shouldn't be exposed in the API (passwords, emails, etc.).

Somewhere in the framework I built, I replaced toObject(); with lodash.clone([object]), which solved all the problems. For others experiencing a similar issue, I suggest trying the same thing in your toJSON method. The toObject(); method of waterline objects apparently has some odd side effects when you true to populate or edit an attribute that matches the name of an association.

Also ran into this issue when serializing a model with a collection attribute (like something with many Comments).

In my case I call .toJSON on the record object with the collection during serialization, which has a model definition like:

attributes: {
  ...
  toJSON: function() {
    var self = this.toObject()
    // could pick a subset of attrs here
    return _.pick(self, _.keys(self))
  }
}

Which leaves me free to then populate the comments attribute and not have surprises about the data on the wire.