Rails Routing

Chapter 2. Introduction

2.1	Routing and the Dispatcher	7
2.2	Up Close and Personal with the Dispatcher	9

When I train people in Rails, I often explain that although a Rails application consists of lots of different little programs doing different things, in some respect the application’s controllers are the application. What I mean is that when someone sends a request to your application, the goal of the request is to execute a controller action. And the execution of the action is the flashpoint, the fulcrum, the main event.

So, it makes sense that the process by which Rails determines which controller and which action to execute must be very important. That process is embodied in the routing system.

The routing system maps a URI to actions. It does this ...