# Basic, basic noob question about routes

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/basic-basic-noob-question-about-routes/96236>\
**Category:** Engines\
**Created:** [June 27, 2006, 4:10pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/basic-basic-noob-question-about-routes/96236 "2006-06-27T16:10:50Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![David\_Robinson](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/7bcc69/32.png) [@David\_Robinson](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/David_Robinson)\
**Post date:** [June 27, 2006, 4:10pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/basic-basic-noob-question-about-routes/96236/1 "2006-06-27T16:10:50Z")

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Hi, I am just getting started with Rails and am trying to take advantage  
of the work that’s already been done for the login engine. I’ve had  
pretty good luck following along with the documentation and the  
quicktime movie, but there is one spot where it looks like I need even  
more hand-holding than has already been provided.

> Setup your Rails application
> 
> Edit your database.yml, most importantly! You might  
> also want to move public/index.html out of the way,  
> and set up some default routes in config/routes.rb.

Can someone explain a bit about this paragraph? What might I need to to  
to my database.yml? I hear it’s important, but I’m not clear at all what  
I should do to it.

And my main question is about the last part about setting up some  
default routes. This is where my ignorance of how an engine works really  
bites me. It looks like I have gotten things almost working - when I try  
to pull up an existing page, the login engine is trying to send me to  
the login form, and I assume I need to do something in routes.rb. What  
would a typical alteration/addition to routes.rb look like?

Of course, that might not be my problem at all. After being sent to  
[http://127.0.0.1:3000/user/login](http://127.0.0.1:3000/user/login), the error I get is:

> NameError
> 
> uninitialized constant UserController

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Dave

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![David\_Robinson](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/7bcc69/32.png) [@David\_Robinson](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/David_Robinson)\
**Post date:** [June 29, 2006, 11:04am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/basic-basic-noob-question-about-routes/96236/2 "2006-06-29T11:04:22Z")

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Hi Dave,

> From your questions I’d probably recommend that you spend a bit of  
> time reading through Rails tutorials, or possibly buying one of the  
> books that are available/upcoming.

Aspects of Rails development such as the database.yml file, or routes,  
are fairly central to setting up your application (rather than  
something specific to using an engine or plugin), so it would almost  
certainly be worth your time getting a solid grounding in Rails before  
looking at using relatively more ‘advanced’ features like plugins or  
engines.

FWIW, there’s nothing special that you need to do to the database.yml  
file, or the routes file, in order to use the login engine. The  
prompts in the README will make more sense if you’ve done a bit of  
basic Rails development. The error that you are getting seems to imply  
that you might’ve forgotten the Engines.start :login line in  
environment.rb.

james