If you don't want a layout rendered, just put:

layout nil

in your controller.

Sometimes its nice to have different layouts choosen automagicly:

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base layout :determine_layout def determine_layout if is_admin? "admin" else "application" end ... end

The details for using layout (such as possible values for the conditions hash) can be found in ActionController::Layout::ClassMethods.

Thats awkward, but the code below does not turn layout off:

render :action => "short_goal", :layout => nil

you must use false

render :action => "short_goal", :layout => false

Worth noting that if you have a controller which inherits from another controller which has a layout, and in this child controller you're determining the layout at runtime using a method for specific actions, the other actions you are excluding will not inherit the layout from the parent controller.

For example, if you've got this

class BaseController < ApplicationController
layout "public"
end
class OrdersController < BaseController
layout :determine_layout, :only => :new
# index, show, new, create, edit, update, destroy ...
end

then OrdersController#index, #show, and #edit won't get the "public" layout -- in fact they won't get a layout at all. So you'll need to do this instead:

class OrdersController < BaseController
layout :determine_layout, :only => :new
layout "public", :except => :new
# ...
end

To choose the layout (or no layout) for a method call the render method with a :layout option.

Since there's no way to edit posts on here, I need to correct myself and say that what I posted before doesn't work, since you can't specify layout multiple times:

class OrdersController < BaseController layout :determine_layout, :only => :new layout "public", :except => :new

...

end

So don't do that. The only way to ensure that the other actions get the default theme is to drop :only/:except and do the conditions yourself:

class OrdersController < BaseController layout :determine_layout

private def determine_layout %w(new).include?(action_name) ? "some_layout" : "public" end end

All this to say, beware of :only/:except -- they aren't as useful as you think they are.

In actions that may or may not be loaded via ajax I use: render :layout => !request.xhr? For an entire controller I might use something like: layout :has_layout?

private
def has_layout?
  request.xhr? ? false : controller_name
end

What seems unusual is that layout true will try look for the layout true.erb