Suppress Stack Trace in Rails API Endpoint Responses
Ruby on Rails is a popular web application framework that allows developers to quickly build powerful and scalable web applications. When building an API with Ruby on Rails, it’s important to provide meaningful error messages to the user when they make a request to an endpoint that doesn’t exist. However, including the full stack trace in the error response can expose sensitive information about the application to the user. In this blog post, we’ll discuss how to suppress the stack trace in Ruby on Rails API endpoint responses.
By default, Ruby on Rails includes the full stack trace in the error response when a user sends a request to an API endpoint that doesn’t exist. This can be helpful for debugging purposes, but it can also expose sensitive information about the application to the user. To suppress the stack trace in the response, you can modify the configuration in the config/application.rb file.
To do this, add the following line to the config/application.rb file:
config.consider_all_requests_local = false
This setting tells Ruby on Rails to render a simple 404 error page instead of the full error page with the stack trace. If you want to further customize the error handling, you can also define custom error pages for specific HTTP status codes. To do this, create a new file in the public directory of your Rails application with the name of the HTTP status code as the filename, followed by .html, e.g. 404.html. Rails will automatically render this file when it encounters a request with the corresponding HTTP status code.
If you want to handle specific types of errors and render a custom response, you can use the rescue_from method in your controllers. For example, to handle a ActionController::RoutingError exception (which is raised when a route cannot be found), you could add the following to your controller:
class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
rescue_from ActionController::RoutingError, with: :render_not_found
def render_not_found
render json: { error: 'Not found' }, status: :not_found
end
end
This will render a JSON response with an error message and a 404 status code when a route cannot be found.
In conclusion, suppressing the stack trace in Ruby on Rails API endpoint responses can help protect sensitive information about the application while still providing meaningful error messages to the user. By modifying the configuration in the config/application.rb file or using the rescue_from method in your controllers, you can customize the error handling to meet your application’s specific needs.
Greetings, my name is Kirk. I’m the creator of Rails Zone and a passionate Ruby on Rails developer. During my free time, I develop helpful tools and tutorials that aid fellow Ruby on Rails developers in creating applications with improved efficiency and speed.