Responding With Errors in Rails

As I work on API projects I find myself having to track down status codes and ensuring a consistent response code for any given error. Keeping these status codes consistent throughout the application starts to become a hassle.

A solution that I stumbled upon happened to be something very simple.

# /lib/errors/unauthorized_access_error.rb
module Errors
  class UnauthorizedAccessError
    def status
      403
    end

    def message
      'unauthorized access'
    end

    def to_hash
      {
        meta: {
          code: status,
          message: message
        }
      }
    end

    def to_json(*)
      to_hash.to_json
    end
  end
end

In my controller I would do the following:

class API::V1::UsersController < API::V1::ApplicationController
  before_filter :authorize!

  def index
    render(json: account.users)
  rescue Errors::UnauthorizedAccessError => error
    render(json: error, status: error.status)
  end
end

Very simple, and very elegant. The status code travels with the UnauthorizedAccessError class and is very well self documenting. This is a very simple example however, the principle still remains that the errors themselves carry the burden of what the HTTP response codes should be and what the response should look like.

It could get a little tedious to keep rescuing from that one error every method, fortunately Rails comes with a rescue_from and you can use that to blanket your application.

class API::V1::ApplicationController
  rescue_from Errors::UnauthorizedAccessError, with: :render_error

  def render_error(error)
    render(json: error, status: error.status)
  end
end

# Your other controller would then look like this!
class API::V1::UsersController < API::V1::ApplicationController
  before_filter :authorize!

  def index
    render(json: account.users)
  end
end

You could even take this a step further and make all of your error classes decend from a common parent like Errors::Error and then do the following:

class API::V1::ApplicationController
  rescue_from Errors::Error, with: :render_error

  def render_error(error)
    render(json: error, status: error.status)
  end
end

The possibilities are endless, but the benefits are huge. Keep things simple and you’ll enjoy the new found power.