Rails redirects route not found requests to 404.html page. Sometimes, we need to redirect to 404 not found page from a controller action. This can be done by rendering 404.html page or raising ActionController::RoutingError error.

Render 404.html page

Instead of using ActionController::RoutingError, 404.html page from the public folder can directly be rendered.

  render :file => "#{Rails.root}/public/404.html",  layout: false, status: :not_found
  # Older versions of Rails use RAILS_ROOT constant

This will render public/404.html page and serve the purpose of rendering not found page.

A method can be written in ApplicationController as,

  def render_not_found
    render :file => "#{RAILS_ROOT}/public/404.html",  :status => 404
  end

Render a custom 404 not found page

Instead of default public/404.html page, a custom html page can also be rendered with render.

Example.

  render :file => "#{Rails.root}/path/to/file.html", layout: false, status: :not_found
  # Older versions of Rails use RAILS_ROOT constant

Raise ActionController::RoutingError

When we want to show page not found, raise ActionController::RoutingError error.

raise ActionController::RoutingError.new('Not Found')

This can also be written as given below.

raise ActionController::RoutingError, 'Not Found'

This can be added as a method on ApplicationController

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

Usage

This can be used in a controller action to render not found page.

  def show
    return not_found if some_condition
  end

Reference:

• ActionController/RoutingError