# Route all requests to one action

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/route-all-requests-to-one-action/105372>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [May 29, 2007, 12:17pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/route-all-requests-to-one-action/105372 "2007-05-29T12:17:14Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![milo](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/85e7bf/32.png) [@milo](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/milo)\
**Post date:** [May 29, 2007, 12:17pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/route-all-requests-to-one-action/105372/1 "2007-05-29T12:17:14Z")

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Is there a simple way of directing all requests to a particular  
controller to resolve to a single action?  
I was thinking that this might be a useful way to redirect to a “site  
down for maintenance” page rather than using apache’s mod\_rewrite.

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**Author:** ![milo](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/85e7bf/32.png) [@milo](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/milo)\
**Post date:** [May 29, 2007, 4:41pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/route-all-requests-to-one-action/105372/2 "2007-05-29T16:41:20Z")

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see api docs for “Route Globbing”:  
[http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionController/Routing.html](http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionController/Routing.html)

e.g., make a ‘default’ controller, and in your routes.rb, make this  
the last route:

# send everything to ‘default’ controller

map.connect ‘\*path’,  
:controller =\> ‘default’,  
:action =\> ‘index’

On May 29, 6:17 am, Milo T. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![milo](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/85e7bf/32.png) [@milo](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/milo)\
**Post date:** [May 29, 2007, 5:13pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/route-all-requests-to-one-action/105372/3 "2007-05-29T17:13:29Z")

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Jeff Emminger wrote:

> see api docs for “Route Globbing”:  
> [http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionController/Routing.html](http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionController/Routing.html)

Great, thanks.  
Adding that first in routes.rb does exactly what I need and has the  
advantage of working without apache.