The Empty Route
Except for learning-by-doing exercises, you're usually safe leaving the default route alone. But another route in routes.rb plays something of a default role that you will probably want to change: the empty route.
A few lines up from the default route you'll see this:
# You can have the root of your site routed by hooking up '' # -- just remember to delete public/index.html. # map.connect '', :controller => "welcome"
What you're seeing here is the empty route -- that is, a rule specifying what should happen when someone connects to:
http://localhost:3000 <i>Note the lack of "/anything" at the end!</i>
The empty route is sort of the opposite of the default route. Instead of saying, "I need any three values, and I'll use them as controller, action, and id," the empty route says, "I don't want any values; I want nothing, and I already know what controller and action I'm going to trigger!" In a newly generated routes.rb file, the empty route is commented out because there's no universal or reasonable default for it. You need to decide what this "nothing" URL should do for each application you write.
Here are some examples of fairly common empty route rules:
map.connect '', :controller => "main", :action => "welcome" map.connect '', :controller => "top", :action => "login" map.connect '', :controller => "main"
That last one will connect to main/index -- index being the default action when none is specified. Defining the empty route is a nice way to give people something to look at when they connect to your site with nothing but the domain name.
