Rails 4 AbstractController::Metal rendering with status != 200 (i.e. 401, 404)

Question

I'm implementing a simple API in my application to communicate with an Android application. I'm trying to use AbstractController::Metal mainly for performance. The problem I'm having is that render is ignoring the status option that I'm passing.

Very simple example:

class Api::V1::ApiController < ActionController::Metal
  include AbstractController::Rendering
  include ActionController::Renderers::All
  include ActionController::RackDelegation
  include ActionController::MimeResponds
end

class Api::V1::SessionsController < Api::V1::ApiController
  def show
    render status: :unauthorized   # using 401 yields the same result
  end
end

Calling

curl -v -X GET http://app.dev:3000/api/v1/sessions.json

I'd expect to receive a 401 but instead I get a 200 OK:

> GET /api/v1/sessions.json HTTP/1.1
> User-Agent: curl/7.30.0
> Host: app.dev:3000
> Accept: */*
> 
< HTTP/1.1 200 OK

Any ideas? Overwriting response.status is the only work around I've found so far, but honestly it looks like an ugly hack.

Thank you in advance for your insights.

Answer 1

To render nothing and return code 401 use:

render nothing: true, status: :unauthorized