Catalyst - How to skip rendering a view

In one of my controllers, I'm doing some SSE async streaming (see here), and I have it working great in a barebones test project. In the test project, I don't have a default view set, so it seems to just pass through - perfect!

Now I'm trying to put it into my existing larger project, however, I'm finding that forwarding it to any view messes it up and I can't figure out how to simply skip the rendering of a view. Because I have a default view now, it refuses to just pass through.

I've blindly tried a few things: $c->detach, $c->forward(undef), overriding the "end" method. None have succeeded in skipping the view rendering - it always passes it on to my default view.

Any ideas?

Edit

Not super relevant, but the action in question:

sub time_server : Path('/events') {
    my ( $self, $c ) = @_;
    $c->res->content_type('text/event-stream');
    $timer_model->( $c, $c->response->write_fh );
}

Solution

Catalyst::Action::Renderview has a small set of criteria it uses when deciding whether or not to call the view. It will skip running the view if:

The request was a HEAD request.
Something has already set $c->response->body to a defined value.
$c->response->status is set to 204 ("No Content") or any 3xx (redirection).
$c->error contains one or more errors and $c->stash->{template} hasn't been set (so that finalize_error can do its job instead).

Honestly this isn't the best possible arrangement, but what I would try in your situation is setting $c->res->body(""); in your time_server action. An empty body won't write anything, and your headers are already finalized since you've called write_fh, but an empty string is still defined so it'll keep RenderView from doing anything.