redirect_to vs redirect_to and return

Question

I doubt that if between both commands there's a difference, when I want to create an action without a view in rails I've always used redirect_to with no return after it and I've never had any problems, but until I forgot to put the redirect_to I realized that rails recommend to do a redirect_to and return if I don't want to have a view for the action, then I wonder, is there any difference when adding the return?, at least in my case I have never noticed any difference or error.

Answer 1

redirect_to will cause any automatic rendering to be skipped.

You only need the 'return' if you need to bypass further code in the action. If the further code does an explicit render, then you must do a return to avoid an error of redirect and render both being present.

For example, a typical pattern in an update action might be...

def update
  @record = Record.new(record_params)
  if @record.save
    flash[:success] = "record was successfully saved"
    redirect_to records_path
    return
  end
  flash.now[:error] = "please fix the problems in the record"
  render :edit
end