Why doesn't my rails controller stop execution after I returned false in a private method?

When I run ajax POST delete on my follows controller, for a record that has already been deleted, rails raises error "undefined method `destroy' for nil:NilClass". But why does it still say that when I tried to render the response in a find_follow method preceding the destory call? Shouldn't the execution stop inside find_follow?

class FollowsController < ApplicationController


 def find_follow
   begin
     @follow = current_artist.follows.find(params[:id])
     raise "Record Not Found" if @follow.nil? 
   rescue => e
      respond_to do |format|
        format.html { redirect_to(artist_follows_path(current_artist),:notice => "#{e}") }
        format.js { render :text => "#{e}", :status => :not_found}
        format.json {render :json 开发者_StackOverflow中文版=> "#{e}", :status => 400}
      end
      return false
    end
  end


  def destroy
    find_follow
    if (@follow.destroy)
       # respond_to html, js, json...

    end

  end
end

Your find_follow returns nil which is fine but as you are calling destroy method you need to write return in destroy method only

Try

def destroy
    return find_follow

You can also use before_filter something like following

class FollowsController < ApplicationController
 before_filter :find_follow, :only=>[:destroy]

 def find_follow
     @follow = current_artist.follows.find_by_id(params[:id])
     if @follow.nil? 
        redirect_to(artist_follows_path(current_artist),:notice => "#{e}")
     else
      return true
    end
  end


  def destroy
    if (@follow.destroy)
       # respond_to html, js, json...

    end

  end
end