How to redirect to a 404 in Rails?

I'd like to 'fake' a 404 page in Rails. In PHP, I would just send a header with the error code as such:

header("HTTP/1.0 404 Not Found");

How is that done with Rails?

Don't render 404 yourself, there's no reason to; Rails has this functionality built in already. If you want to show a 404 page, create a render_404 method (or not_found as I called it) in ApplicationController like this:

def not_found
  raise ActionController::RoutingError.new('Not Found')
end

Rails also handles AbstractController::ActionNotFound, and ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound the same way.

This does two things better:

1. It uses Rails' built in rescue_from handler to render the 404 page, and

2. it interrupts the execution of your code, letting you do nice things like:

   user = User.find_by_email(params[:email]) or not_found user.do_something!

without having to write ugly conditional statements.

As a bonus, it's also super easy to handle in tests. For example, in an rspec integration test:

# RSpec 1

lambda {
  visit '/something/you/want/to/404'
}.should raise_error(ActionController::RoutingError)

# RSpec 2+

expect {
  get '/something/you/want/to/404'
}.to raise_error(ActionController::RoutingError)

And minitest:

assert_raises(ActionController::RoutingError) do 
  get '/something/you/want/to/404'
end

OR refer more info from Rails render 404 not found from a controller action

HTTP 404 Status

To return a 404 header, just use the :status option for the render method.

def action
  # here the code

  render :status => 404
end

If you want to render the standard 404 page you can extract the feature in a method.

def render_404
  respond_to do |format|
    format.html { render :file => "#{Rails.root}/public/404", :layout => false, :status => :not_found }
    format.xml  { head :not_found }
    format.any  { head :not_found }
  end
end

and call it in your action

def action
  # here the code

  render_404
end

If you want the action to render the error page and stop, simply use a return statement.

def action
  render_404 and return if params[:something].blank?

  # here the code that will never be executed
end

ActiveRecord and HTTP 404

Also remember that Rails rescues some ActiveRecord errors, such as the ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound displaying the 404 error page.

It means you don't need to rescue this action yourself

def show
  user = User.find(params[:id])
end

User.find raises an ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound when the user doesn't exist. This is a very powerful feature. Look at the following code

def show
  user = User.find_by_email(params[:email]) or raise("not found")
  # ...
end

You can simplify it by delegating to Rails the check. Simply use the bang version.

def show
  user = User.find_by_email!(params[:email])
  # ...
end

The newly Selected answer submitted by Steven Soroka is close, but not complete. The test itself hides the fact that this is not returning a true 404 - it's returning a status of 200 - "success". The original answer was closer, but attempted to render the layout as if no failure had occurred. This fixes everything:

render :text => 'Not Found', :status => '404'

Here's a typical test set of mine for something I expect to return 404, using RSpec and Shoulda matchers:

describe "user view" do
  before do
    get :show, :id => 'nonsense'
  end

  it { should_not assign_to :user }

  it { should respond_with :not_found }
  it { should respond_with_content_type :html }

  it { should_not render_template :show }
  it { should_not render_with_layout }

  it { should_not set_the_flash }
end

This healthy paranoia allowed me to spot the content-type mismatch when everything else looked peachy :) I check for all these elements: assigned variables, response code, response content type, template rendered, layout rendered, flash messages.

I'll skip the content type check on applications that are strictly html...sometimes. After all, "a skeptic checks ALL the drawers" :)

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1998-01-20/

FYI: I don't recommend testing for things that are happening in the controller, ie "should_raise". What you care about is the output. My tests above allowed me to try various solutions, and the tests remain the same whether the solution is raising an exception, special rendering, etc.

You could also use the render file:

render file: "#{Rails.root}/public/404.html", layout: false, status: 404

Where you can choose to use the layout or not.

Another option is to use the Exceptions to control it:

raise ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound, "Record not found."

The selected answer doesn't work in Rails 3.1+ as the error handler was moved to a middleware (see github issue).

Here's the solution I found which I'm pretty happy with.

In ApplicationController:

  unless Rails.application.config.consider_all_requests_local
    rescue_from Exception, with: :handle_exception
  end

  def not_found
    raise ActionController::RoutingError.new('Not Found')
  end

  def handle_exception(exception=nil)
    if exception
      logger = Logger.new(STDOUT)
      logger.debug "Exception Message: #{exception.message} \n"
      logger.debug "Exception Class: #{exception.class} \n"
      logger.debug "Exception Backtrace: \n"
      logger.debug exception.backtrace.join("\n")
      if [ActionController::RoutingError, ActionController::UnknownController, ActionController::UnknownAction].include?(exception.class)
        return render_404
      else
        return render_500
      end
    end
  end

  def render_404
    respond_to do |format|
      format.html { render template: 'errors/not_found', layout: 'layouts/application', status: 404 }
      format.all { render nothing: true, status: 404 }
    end
  end

  def render_500
    respond_to do |format|
      format.html { render template: 'errors/internal_server_error', layout: 'layouts/application', status: 500 }
      format.all { render nothing: true, status: 500}
    end
  end

and in application.rb:

config.after_initialize do |app|
  app.routes.append{ match '*a', :to => 'application#not_found' } unless config.consider_all_requests_local
end

And in my resources (show, edit, update, delete):

@resource = Resource.find(params[:id]) or not_found

This could certainly be improved, but at least, I have different views for not_found and internal_error without overriding core Rails functions.

these will help you...

Application Controller

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
  protect_from_forgery
  unless Rails.application.config.consider_all_requests_local             
    rescue_from ActionController::RoutingError, ActionController::UnknownController, ::AbstractController::ActionNotFound, ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound, with: lambda { |exception| render_error 404, exception }
  end

  private
    def render_error(status, exception)
      Rails.logger.error status.to_s + " " + exception.message.to_s
      Rails.logger.error exception.backtrace.join("\n") 
      respond_to do |format|
        format.html { render template: "errors/error_#{status}",status: status }
        format.all { render nothing: true, status: status }
      end
    end
end

Errors controller

class ErrorsController < ApplicationController
  def error_404
    @not_found_path = params[:not_found]
  end
end

views/errors/error_404.html.haml

.site
  .services-page 
    .error-template
      %h1
        Oops!
      %h2
        404 Not Found
      .error-details
        Sorry, an error has occured, Requested page not found!
        You tried to access '#{@not_found_path}', which is not a valid page.
      .error-actions
        %a.button_simple_orange.btn.btn-primary.btn-lg{href: root_path}
          %span.glyphicon.glyphicon-home
          Take Me Home
 

<%= render file: 'public/404', status: 404, formats: [:html] %>

just add this to the page you want to render to the 404 error page and you are done.

routes.rb
  get '*unmatched_route', to: 'main#not_found'

main_controller.rb
  def not_found
    render :file => "#{Rails.root}/public/404.html", :status => 404, :layout => false
  end

I wanted to throw a 'normal' 404 for any logged in user that isn't an admin, so I ended up writing something like this in Rails 5:

class AdminController < ApplicationController
  before_action :blackhole_admin

  private

  def blackhole_admin
    return if current_user.admin?

    raise ActionController::RoutingError, 'Not Found'
  rescue ActionController::RoutingError
    render file: "#{Rails.root}/public/404", layout: false, status: :not_found
  end
end

Raising ActionController::RoutingError('not found') has always felt a little bit strange to me - in the case of an unauthenticated user, this error does not reflect reality - the route was found, the user is just not authenticated.

I happened across config.action_dispatch.rescue_responses and I think in some cases this is a more elegant solution to the stated problem:

# application.rb
config.action_dispatch.rescue_responses = {
  'UnauthenticatedError' => :not_found
}

# my_controller.rb
before_action :verify_user_authentication

def verify_user_authentication
  raise UnauthenticatedError if !user_authenticated?
end

What's nice about this approach is:

1. It hooks into the existing error handling middleware like a normal ActionController::RoutingError, but you get a more meaningful error message in dev environments
2. It will correctly set the status to whatever you specify in the rescue_responses hash (in this case 404 - not_found)
3. You don't have to write a not_found method that needs to be available everywhere.

To test the error handling, you can do something like this:

feature ErrorHandling do
  before do
    Rails.application.config.consider_all_requests_local = false
    Rails.application.config.action_dispatch.show_exceptions = true
  end

  scenario 'renders not_found template' do
    visit '/blah'
    expect(page).to have_content "The page you were looking for doesn't exist."
  end
end

If you want to handle different 404s in different ways, consider catching them in your controllers. This will allow you to do things like tracking the number of 404s generated by different user groups, have support interact with users to find out what went wrong / what part of the user experience might need tweaking, do A/B testing, etc.

I have here placed the base logic in ApplicationController, but it can also be placed in more specific controllers, to have special logic only for one controller.

The reason I am using an if with ENV['RESCUE_404'], is so I can test the raising of AR::RecordNotFound in isolation. In tests, I can set this ENV var to false, and my rescue_from would not fire. This way I can test the raising separate from the conditional 404 logic.

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
  
  rescue_from ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound, with: :conditional_404_redirect if ENV['RESCUE_404']

private

  def conditional_404_redirect
    track_404(@current_user)
    if @current_user.present?
      redirect_to_user_home          
    else
      redirect_to_front
    end
  end

end