The Rails Way

Chapter 10. ActionView

The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. Instead of altering their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views...which can be very uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering.

—Doctor Who

Controllers are the skeleton and musculature of your Rails application. In which case, models form the heart and mind, and your view templates (based on ActionView, the third major component of Rails) are your application’s skin—the part that is visible to the outside world.

ActionView is the Rails API for putting together the visual component of your application, namely the HTML and associated content that will be rendered in a web browser whenever someone ...