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Setting The Default Page

Goals

  • The main page of our app should be the list of topics.

    • Currently when you go to your server main page, you see the Rails Logo and Version. It would be easier to use our app if the main page went directly to the topics list. In this step we'll make that happen and learn a bit about routes in Rails.

Steps

Step 1

open http://localhost:3000/ - it's still the default page

Step 2

Open the file config/routes.rb in the editor.

Look for the line Rails.application.routes.draw at the beginning of the file, and add the line root 'topics#index' after it. When you are done the start of the file should look like this:

Rails.application.routes.draw do
  root 'topics#index'

Step 3

Check http://localhost:3000/ again. You should see the topics list now.

Step 4

let's look at all the routes created by the scaffold - in the terminal

Type this in the shell:
rails routes -c topics

Explanation

  • root 'topics#index' is a Rails route that says the default address for your site the one given by the topics controller with the index action.
  • Rails routes control how URLs (web addresses) get matched with code on the server.
  • The file config/routes.rb is like an address book listing the possible addresses and which code goes with each one
  • routes.rb uses some shortcuts so it doesn't always show all the possible URLs. To explore the URLs in more detail we can use the terminal.
  • When reading the output of rails routes :id means the primary key of a record. :format is the format of the view, e.g. html or json.
    Prefix Verb   URI Pattern                Controller#Action
      root GET    /                          topics#index
    topics GET    /topics(.:format)          topics#index
           POST   /topics(.:format)          topics#create
 new_topic GET    /topics/new(.:format)      topics#new
edit_topic GET    /topics/:id/edit(.:format) topics#edit
     topic GET    /topics/:id(.:format)      topics#show
           PATCH  /topics/:id(.:format)      topics#update
           PUT    /topics/:id(.:format)      topics#update
           DELETE /topics/:id(.:format)      topics#destroy

Now would be a good time to commit to git

find a good commit message and commit your changes

Next Step:

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