How to do static content in Rails?

Question

Looking at different options:

One is to just put the static pages in the public/ folder, but I do want the header from layout/application to be consistent.

I tried this, but I got an error:

# in routes.rb:
map.connect '*path', :controller => 'content', :action => 'show'

# in content_controller.rb:
def show
  render :action => params[:path].join('/')
end

All I want is an easy way to put together things like my faq, contact, tos, privacy, and other non-application type pages somewhere easy by just creating an .rhtml. who has done this?

Answer 1

For Rails6, Rails5 and Rails4 you can do the following:

Put the line below at the end of your routes.rb

  get ':action' => 'static#:action'

Then requests to root/welcome, will render the /app/views/static/welcome.html.erb.

Don't forget to create a 'static' controller, even though you don't have to put anything in there.

Limitation: If somebody tries to access a page that does not exist, it will throw an application error. See this solution below that can handle 404s

For Rails3 you have to use 'match' instead of 'get'

  match ':action' => 'static#:action'