Return a specific http status code in Rails

Question

How do you return 503 Service Unavailable in Rails for the entire application?

Also, how do you do the same for specific controllers?

Answer 1

For the entire application:

# ApplicationController
before_filter :return_unavailable_status

private
  def return_unavailable_status
    render :nothing => true, :status => :service_unavailable
  end

If you wanted a custom error page, you could do:

render 'custom_unavailable_page', :status => :service_unavailable    

If you don't want it for specific controllers:

# SomeController
skip_before_filter :return_unavailable_status