Short Circuit a controller action with xhr for rails

Question

Is there a way to short-circuit an action with a method and ensure that other methods aren't called afterwards in Rails?

def update
   return head(:unauthorized) unless available_user_settings?
   if setting.update....
   ...
end

I would like to do something more like:

def update
   ensure_settings_modifiable!
   if setting.update....
   ...
end

But I don't know of a good way to render head and stop the rest of the action if the settings should not be updated.

Answer 1

You could use before_action something like:

before_action :ensure_settings_modifiable!, only: [:update]

private

def ensure_settings_modifiable!
  head(:unauthorized) unless available_user_settings?
end

as the update action won't execute if head is called in a before_action