does rails have a 'response.write', want to do quick output from an action

Question

From within an action (not the view), I want to output some quick debug code.

Does rails have a method for this?

in asp.net I would do:

Response.Write("hello");

Answer 1

That'd be this:

render :text => "hello"

You can only call render or redirect once for a single request, just FYI.

Answer 2

You may also use the logger. Put

logger.info "text"
logger.info @var

somewhere on the action. And then tail -f log/development.log

This way you won't interfere with the normal rendering process, since you can only use render once.