Feature/json api patch

@l8nite @ak47 please review. the way her currently is set up it doesn't really work for json api. our older client gems are built on the stock version but we needed to use this branch for the intake work (which does follow json api specs).

i've PR'd the maintainer but i'm not that confident that this will get merged back in. so by doing this we may be diverting permanently.
this however is not. and i don't think there's an easy way to do it except for a config var. i hesitate to do this because i don't like supporting a spec that doesn't conform.

but perhaps that's the best way forward.