Must a rails controller return a view for each action?

Question

My rails users_controller is receiving ajax data at its update_tool path. My intent is to decrement the users dollars by the price of the tool, and add that tool's id to the users's tool_id (which references a tool table).

I'm receiving :user_id and :toolId in params.

Heres my controller:

def update_tool
    redirect_to :index
    @user = User.find(params[:user_id])
    @tool = Tool.find(params[:toolId])
    price = @tool.price

    # subtract tool price from users dollars
    @user.dollars = @user.dollars - price

    # re-assign users tool_id reference ID
    @user.tool_id = @tool.id

    #store to database
    @user.save

  end

However, when I trigger this path, nothing seems to happen, and I recieve the following error in my browsers console:

BROWSER ERROR: PATCH http://localhost:3000/update_dollars 500 (Internal Server Error) jquery.js?body=1:5

My server logs show:

LOGS: ActionView::MissingTemplate (Missing template users/update_dollars, application/update_dollars....(etc)

Is my controller trying to find a view to render? If so why?

How can I simply have the controller update the database, without taking any further action?

Answer 1

You can do this:

render nothing: true

in your update_tool action.

Please check this for reference:

http://guides.rubyonrails.org/layouts_and_rendering.html