Rails: Up and Running, 2nd Edition

Setting the Default Root

Typing http://127.0.0.1:3000/photos or http://localhost:3000/photos is getting tedious. It would be easier to use http://127.0.0.1:3000/ and be directed to whatever page you want to designate as the starting page. You already know how Rails specifies routes. Edit config/routes.rb and find this section of comments:

# You can have the root of your site routed with map.root -- 
# just remember to delete public/index.html.
# map.root :controller => "welcome"

Now, uncomment the last line and change it to:

map.root :controller => "photos"

With this new routing rule, anytime Rails sees an empty URL (represented by the '' parameter), it will invoke the index action in the photos controller. Before this change will work, you need to delete the public/index.html file. If you don’t, the web server will serve up public/index.html instead of app/views/photos/index.html.erb whenever you browse to http://127.0.0.1:3000/. Because the index.html is static, Rails will never get called.

Now, try browsing to http://127.0.0.1:3000/; you should see a nice new photos/index page, complete with thumbnails and navigation bar.