Return a specific http status code in Rails

ruby-on-rails http http-status-codes http-status-code-503

80,137

Solution 1

For the entire application:

# ApplicationController
before_filter :return_unavailable_status

private
  def return_unavailable_status
    render :nothing => true, :status => :service_unavailable
  end

If you wanted a custom error page, you could do:

render 'custom_unavailable_page', :status => :service_unavailable

If you don't want it for specific controllers:

# SomeController
skip_before_filter :return_unavailable_status

Solution 2

You can use head

head 503
# or
head :service_unavailable

Solution 3

The following works for me:

format.any { render :json => {:response => 'Unable to authenticate' },:status => 401  }

The :response for the HTML response just in case it's accessed from the browser.

The render head 503 does not seem to be working with the above statement.

80,137

Sathish Manohar

Self Taught. Web Designer, Developer. Building Cool Stuff that I want in this world.

Updated on August 03, 2020

Comments

Sathish Manohar almost 4 years

How do you return 503 Service Unavailable in Rails for the entire application?

Also, how do you do the same for specific controllers?
Sathish Manohar over 12 years

To display a custom downpage shall I use, render "custom_unavailable_page", instead of render :nothing => true
iwasrobbed over 12 years

@SathishManohar Exactly. custom_unavailable_page would be the name of the view file that you would render.
freemanoid about 11 years

I can use status symbols like :service_unavailable All statuses: apidock.com/rails/ActionController/Base/…
Sergio Tulentsev about 11 years

@freemanoid: I personally like integer codes better. I already know them. No need to memorize yet another set of values.
Chloe over 10 years

Where is that documented? What are the other statuses? api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionView/Helpers/…
iwasrobbed over 10 years

@Chloe I don't believe it's documented very well, but here's a list apidock.com/rails/ActionController/Base/…
juliangonzalez over 7 years

DEPRECATION WARNING: :nothing option is deprecated and will be removed in Rails 5.1. Use head method to respond with empty response body
juliangonzalez over 7 years

DEPRECATION WARNING: :nothing option is deprecated and will be removed in Rails 5.1. Use head method to respond with empty response body
Sergio Tulentsev over 7 years

@juliangonzalez: yeah, obviously. It's late here, thanks :)
heroxav about 7 years

you saved my life
labyrinth about 7 years

This would be bad for SEO. For example, Google would see this as a broken site, not just a site temporarily down but expected to be back up. See this: yoast.com/http-503-site-maintenance-seo
Joshua Pinter almost 6 years

FYI, head has been available since Rails 1.2.0. Saying "Rails 5+" implies it's only available in Rails 5 and beyond, which is incorrect.
Sergio Tulentsev almost 6 years

@JoshuaPinter: clarified. Sounds better?
Joshua Pinter almost 6 years

@SergioTulentsev I would just update the answer to use head and if you want to keep the original answer for posterity, just put it below as "Original Answer" or something. I think we can all agree that head is the way to go, especially since render nothing: true is deprecated on current Rails versions.
Sergio Tulentsev almost 6 years

@JoshuaPinter: indeed. what was I thinking?
Joshua Pinter almost 6 years

@SergioTulentsev Ha! Brilliant! Thanks for being so open to suggestions. That's a really rare trait in programmers. :)
mwfearnley almost 5 years

Might be worth changing this to "Service unavailable" / 503, so it matches with the purpose of the question. I assume it's the "render head" syntax that isn't working for you, rather than the error code?