before_filter in Rails and ajax requests

Question

Hi guys,

I have the app based only on ajax calls but i need constantly to check the decreasing value in session variable. I created a before_filter with a redirect_to :action => :action_name for some reason this doesn"t work for me. I see in log Filter chain halted as [:method_name] rendered_or_redirected. but in fact nothing happens. Does anyone know what's the problem? I wanted to make the code DRY with using filters but looks like it's not handling ajax requests :(

The code is pretty simple (it's a game actually) here's the method which hangs on before_filter

def check_winner
  if session[:game].user.cards.length == 0 || session[:game].pc.cards.length == 0
    flash[:notice] = "The end"

    redirect_to :action => "win"
  end    
end

session[:game] keeps several objects that I initialize at the beginning of the game. I've never used rails filters with ajax but it worked always with normal http requests The user triggers actions everywhere via link_to_remote I tryed to render ajax page update on the filter method but it just throws me doble render error :(

Answer 1

I don't think you want to redirect in the before_filter are you using that to redirect to an AJAX-specific action? A better alternative is to either use a responds_to block to respond to specific requests or to simply have an ajax-specific url that gets called.