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Methods for limiting the Rails render format to html

Asked 2009-11-04T00:51:56.530
13

I have a Rails 2.1.2 site that only has html templates e.g. jobs.html.erb, so when I request a restful resource:

www.mysite.com/jobs/1

It renders my job in html, however, if I request:

www.mysite.com/jobs/1.xml

I get the error:

Template is missing Missing template jobs/show.xml.erb in view path c:/workspace/mysite/app/views

What's worse is that I can also request something like

www.mysite.com/jobs/1.xyz

And indeed I see the error:

Template is missing Missing template jobs/show.xyz.erb in view path c:/workspace/mysite/app/views

To stricly present just html content, what is the cleanest and simplest way to tell Rails that I don't want to render anything other than .html.erb files.

It is important to note that:

  • Some of my controller actions contain conditional calls to the render() method whilst others use the default Rails behaviour i.e. if you don't call render() then the template named youraction.html.erb will be rendered.
  • My code does not use the responds_to() method

It would be great if the solution was not at the render/responds_to level as I would have to modify a significant number of actions. Perhaps there is a way to configure Rails so that only html templates are rendered?

ruby-on-rails rest format mime render
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1 Answer

10

You can use Rails Per-Action Overwrite feature. What's this? --> It’s also possible to override standard resource handling by passing in a block to respond_with specifying which formats to override for that action:

class UsersController < ApplicationController::Base

  respond_to :html, :xml, :json

  # Override html format since we want to redirect to a different page,
  # not just serve back the new resource
  def create
    @user = User.create(params[:user])
    respond_with(@user) do |format|
      format.html { redirect_to users_path }
    end
  end
end

:except And :only Options

You can also pass in :except and :only options to only support formats for specific actions (as you do with before_filter):

class UsersController < ApplicationController::Base
  respond_to :html, :only => :index
  respond_to :xml, :json, :except => :show
  ...
end

The :any Format

If you’re still want to use respond_to within your individual actions, use the :any resource format that can be used as a wildcard match against any unspecified formats:

class UsersController < ApplicationController::Base

  def index

    @users = User.all

    respond_to do |format|
      format.html
      format.any(:xml, :json) { render request.format.to_sym => @users }
    end
  end
end
answered 2010-03-18T13:43:36.213

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