# A question about the RESTful Routing

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/a-question-about-the-restful-routing/136369>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [May 1, 2008, 9:38am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/a-question-about-the-restful-routing/136369 "2008-05-01T09:38:55Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![nik](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/6de8d8/32.png) [@nik](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/nik)\
**Post date:** [May 1, 2008, 9:38am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/a-question-about-the-restful-routing/136369/1 "2008-05-01T09:38:55Z")

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Hello!

Thank you for reading my post, if I am not being careful about the use  
of terminology or am not being exactly clear enough for my question to  
be understood, kindly notify and I will correct.

I remember that when I used Rails 1.2, I can just add a blank action  
in a controller and then create a .rhtml with that same name as does  
the action and then I can just write "hello world"in that .rhtml and  
it will show in  
[http://localhost:3000/controller/thatNewActionIJustWrote/](http://localhost:3000/controller/thatNewActionIJustWrote/)

Now, I go back to my bookstore controller and add  
def greenapple  
end

and I go create greenapple.html.erb  
and I typed “hello world” in greenapple.html.erb (I know it’s silly, I  
just wanted to demonstrate what my problem is)

It gives me:  
Routing Error  
No route matches “/greenapple/” with {:method =\> :get}

Any ideas? Or, which I am sure, if you know some web pages that I can  
read through, that will be great, too!!

Thanks a quintillion!

Nik

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![nik](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/6de8d8/32.png) [@nik](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/nik)\
**Post date:** [May 1, 2008, 9:47am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/a-question-about-the-restful-routing/136369/2 "2008-05-01T09:47:45Z")

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Hello all!

I am not sure if I have solved this, maybe I shouldn’t trying things  
out at 1am.

But here’s what I got  
I added one line  
map.connect  
‘greenapple’, :controller=\>‘bookstore’, :action=\>‘greenapple’  
in the config/routes.rb

And it worked!

Can I change my question to:  
If I am to add a new action in a controller, do I always have to  
manually specify a map.connect ‘name of that new action’, :controller  
=\> ‘name of that controller’, :action=\>‘name of that action again’  
?

If so, how come this is the case whereas the old rails needs not? If  
not, what’s the advantage?

Thank You all! Have a great day!

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![nik](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/6de8d8/32.png) [@nik](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/nik)\
**Post date:** [May 1, 2008, 10:10am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/a-question-about-the-restful-routing/136369/3 "2008-05-01T10:10:29Z")

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Nik wrote:

> If I am to add a new action in a controller, do I always have to  
> manually specify a map.connect ‘name of that new action’, :controller  
> =\> ‘name of that controller’, :action=\>‘name of that action again’  
> ?
> 
> If so, how come this is the case whereas the old rails needs not? If  
> not, what’s the advantage?

In Rails 1.2 if you are not using RESTful routes, then you will just  
have, by default, routing lines like this:

map.connect ‘:controller/:action/:id’  
map.connect ‘:controller/:action/:id.:format’

With Rails2 using RESTful routes, then you will probably have a line  
like this before those (if they are present):

map.resources :bookstore

The documentation will give you the full details about this:

[http://api.rubyonrails.com/classes/ActionController/Resources.html#M000308](http://api.rubyonrails.com/classes/ActionController/Resources.html#M000308)

In particular, if you want to add a non-REST method to the controller  
you can change the resources line to:

If the #greenapple method is expecting an :id parameter  
(/bookstore/greenapple/1 etc):  
map.resources :bookstore, :member =\> {:greenapple =\> :get}

If the #greenapple method does not expect an :id but is an operation on  
all items controlled by the bookstore controller (/bookstore/greenapple  
on its own):  
map.resources :bookstore, :collection =\> {:greenapple =\> :get}

If the method is the result of a form post then replace :get with :post.  
The documentation has numberous examples.

In any event, with a Rails2 application, run the following at the top  
level of the application:

rake routes

This will show you how any given URL will get converted to  
controller/action and when changing the routes.rb file, if you are  
unsure what effect your are having, just run the rake command again to  
see the difference.