rails view without a controller

Question

Can rails handle creating a view without a controller? For example, let say I have a page that just links to other pages, would I need to create a dummy controller for that, or could I just do something in my routes file?

Answer 1

I like August's answer but I have a slightly different method.

Let's say you want to add

/any/path/somefile.html.erb

but not add a controller...

You can just add folder to views called "application", create your file in that directory..

Then in your routes file just add

match '/any/path/somefile' => 'application#somefile'

Your erb still evaluates, you get your layout, and you can create any path you want... (all this does is remove the need for the pages controller)

Hope it helps...

Answer 2

No. All requests has to go through a controller.

I like to have a PagesController, with map.page ":action", :controller => "pages". That way, I can create app/views/pages/foo.erb and have it available on /foo without any extra code.

Answer 3

Another option would be adding a static html file in your /public directory if you truly don't need it as part of your application.