Question

Is there a way to globally define a rails app to only serve json and xml and appropriately error on any other requests?

I’m thinking it’s something along the lines of a before_filter and responds_to block in the ApplicationController but that’s as far as my investigation has got me.

Answer 1

Just declare it at the class level on your controller, using respond_to. It will apply to all your controllers if you do it on ApplicationController

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
  respond_to :xml, :json
  …
end

Also read about ActionController::Responder class for more options.