From an action, get a post variable, output to page, then halt execution

Question

Is it possible to grab a post variable in a action, output it to the screen, and then halt execution?

in asp.net I would do:

Response.Write (Request.Form["blah"]);
Response.End();

Answer 1

puts params[:blah]
abort

Answer 2

If you are trying to send it back to the browser (output to screen?) to debug, you can drop this line in your action. The "return" will prevent a double render error. But this will not halt execution of after_filter if you have one.

  render :text=> params[:blah] and return

Answer 3

In addition to suggestions already mentioned, you can raise exceptions:

raise params[:blah]
raise params.inspect
raise params.to_yaml
# ...and so on

In this case, you can even just do raise without specifying anything. Rails will by default print out all params as part of its exception message screen.