Missing template blogs/index on Ruby on Rails project

Question

For one of my projects I'm getting this exception every now and then:

ActionView::MissingTemplate: Missing template blogs/index with {:handlers=>[:rxml, :erb, :builder, :rjs, :haml, :rhtml], :formats=>["image/jpeg", "image/pjpeg", "image/png", "image/gif"], :locale=>[:en, :en]} in view paths "/var/www/keeponposting/releases/20110403083651/app/views"

It seems someone is requesting an image from a URL that isn't an image:

HTTP_ACCEPT "image/jpeg, image/pjpeg, image/png, image/gif"

Any ideas what to do about it? Do I have to implement a handler for one of those and return "" to get rid of this exceptions or is there a better way to handle it?

Now I'm also getting this:

ActionView::MissingTemplate: Missing template blogs/index with {:formats=>["text/*"], :handlers=>[:rjs, :haml, :rhtml, :erb, :rxml, :builder], :locale=>[:en, :en]} in view paths "/var/www/keeponposting/releases/20110415040109/app/views"

Isn't there a way to send back HTML no matter what format is requested?

score 13 · Answer 1 · edited Jul 11 '11 at 06:55

13

I agree about blocking the offending robot, but if you really want to force the response format add a before_filter and set request.format = :html, like this:

before_filter :force_request_format_to_html

private

def force_request_format_to_html
  request.format = :html
end

edited Jul 11 '11 at 06:55

Kobi

135,331
41
252
292

answered May 23 '11 at 17:27

Pablo Castellazzi

4,164
23
20

1

Of course, this only works if your application doesn't accept other formats! No JSON or XML, which are common formats. – ipd Aug 10 '11 at 17:29
1

In my case, googlebot was hitting a search results page, something we want, but a format was not getting set at all. Our search action does also allow for json requests, so forcing :html wouldn't work. but a simple condition does: `if request[:format].blank? request.format = :html end` – Levi Rosol Sep 24 '13 at 16:26

score 8 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 22 '11 at 17:07

I fixed this issue (a few minutes ago – so far, so good) with this new Rails 3.1 option:

config.action_dispatch.ignore_accept_header = true

As mentioned in this Rails issue. That goes in config/application.rb.

I tested it like so in a RSpec request test (using Capybara):

it "should not break with HTTP_ACCEPT image/*;w=320;h=420 from iPhone" do
  page.driver.header "Accept", "image/*;w=320;h=420"
  visit "/some/path"
  page.should have_content("Some content")
end

That's good, but is there any good browser out there doing it, or is it an attack or hack attempt or DOS or bot? — Kazim Zaidi, Nov 28 '17 at 05:46

score 6 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 29 '13 at 00:18

Here is a stricter response; a suggestion by purp, from the discussion on issue 4127.

class FooController
  rescue_from  ActionView::MissingTemplate, :with => :missing_template

  def missing_template
    render :nothing => true, :status => 406
  end
end

Paul Russell · Answer 4 · 2011-04-07T05:45:53.483

5

I would be tempted to rescue the MissingTemplate in your application controller and log the Referrer header to see what's triggering this request. You never know, it might be some obscure part of your own app!

If on the other hand you're confident this is being caused by a robot, have you considered adding the offending URL to your robots.txt file? For example:

User-Agent: YandexImages
Disallow: /your/failed/path

Replacing 'your/failed/path' with the path that the robot is stumbling over. If the robot is struggling all over the place, you could just disallow access to the whole site for that particular robot:

User-Agent: YandexImages
Disallow: /

I think this is a cleaner and lighter approach than implementing a handler specifically to suppress errors from a seemingly badly behaved bot.

edited Apr 07 '11 at 05:45

answered Apr 05 '11 at 21:32

Paul Russell

4,727
1
30
28

I thought about that, but in the reported exception in Hoptoad I generally get the referrer and this time it wasn't there, so I presume there's none. The user agent is Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; YandexImages/3.0; +http://yandex.com/bots), so I presume it's a lost little robot. – Pablo Fernandez Apr 07 '11 at 04:32
Probably worth adding this information (together with the actual paths being accessed) to the question? I've edited the answer to suggest excluding the robot from the areas in question using robots.txt – Paul Russell Apr 07 '11 at 05:46
Blocking a lost little robot might patch this little error. What can be done to the rails app to force the response type? – TelegramSam May 23 '11 at 17:09
We get these from mobile users, not just robots. People who are using old handset browsers who send an HTTP_ACCEPT header of `text/*`. – ipd Aug 10 '11 at 17:27

score 0 · Answer 5 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:22

I did this: In my controller, I put a before filter:

def acceptable_mime_type
  unless request.accepts.detect{|a| a == :json || a == :html} || request.accepts.include?(nil)
    if request.accepts.detect{|a| a.to_s().include?("*/*")}
      ActionDispatch::Request.ignore_accept_header = true
    else
      render text: "Unacceptable", status: 406
      false
    end
  end
end

It checks for my supported types (e.g. json, html) and nil (nil renders default html), then if those mime types aren't supported, it checks for "/" in the header. If it finds it, I force rails to render the default mime type by ignoring the accept header.

To test this in rspec, I had to do this:

describe 'bad header' do
  describe 'accept' do
    let(:mimeTypes) { ["application/text, application/octet-stream"] }

    it 'should return a 406 status code' do
      request.accept = mimeTypes
      get 'index'
      expect(response.response_code).to eq 406
    end

    describe 'with */* included' do
      it 'should return a 200 status code' do
        request.accept = ["*/*"] + mimeTypes
        get 'index'
        expect(response.response_code).to eq 200
      end
    end
  end
end

For some reason, I was getting problems trying to send accept headers properly in rspec using the methods described here, but I found if I set request.accept to an Array, both my tests passed. Weird, I know, but I'm moving on to the next issue for now.

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Sep 13 '15 at 23:07

0

Add formats: [:html] to render:

def action
  render formats: [:html]
end

answered Sep 13 '15 at 23:07

brauliobo

5,843
4
29
34

Missing template blogs/index on Ruby on Rails project

6 Answers6

Linked