The StaticPages controller generation in Listing 3.4 automatically updates the routes file, called config/routes.rb, which Rails uses to find the correspondence between URIs and web pages. This is our first encounter with the config directory, so it’s helpful to take a quick look at it (Figure 3.4). The config directory is where Rails collects files needed for the application configuration—hence the name. Since we generated home and help actions, the routes file already has a rule for each one, as seen in Listing 3.5.

Here, the rule

maps requests for the URI /static pages/home to the home action in the StaticPages controller. Moreover, by using get we arrange for the route to respond to a GET request, which is one of the fundamental HTTP verbs supported by the hypertext transfer protocol (Box 3.2). In our case, this means that when we generate a home action inside the StaticPages controller we automatically get a page at the address /static pages/home. To see the results, navigate to /static pages/home (Figure 3.5).