How to create a catch-all route in Ruby on Rails?

Question

I want to have all requests that satisfy a certain constraint to go to a specific controller. So I need a catch-all route. How do I specify that in Rails? Is it something like this?

match '*', to: 'subdomain_controller#show', constraints: {subdomain: /.+\.users/}

Will that really catch all possible routes? It's important that none slip through even if there are many nested directories.

Using Ruby on Rails 3.2, but ready to upgrade to 4.0.

UPDATE: '*path' seems to work. However, the issue I'm running into is whenever the file exists in my public directory, Rails renders that instead.

Answer 1

I think you need minor tweaks in this approach but you get the point:

UPDATE:

#RAILS 3
#make this your last route.
match '*unmatched_route', :to => 'application#raise_not_found!'

#RAILS 4, needs a different syntax in the routes.rb. It does not accept Match anymore.
#make this your last route.
get '*unmatched_route', :to => 'application#raise_not_found!'

And

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base

...
#called by last route matching unmatched routes.  
#Raises RoutingError which will be rescued from in the same way as other exceptions.
def raise_not_found!
    raise ActionController::RoutingError.new("No route matches #{params[:unmatched_route]}")
end
...

end

More info here: https://gist.github.com/Sujimichi/2349565