Static Pages

Rails has two main ways of making static web pages. First, Rails can handle truly static pages consisting of raw HTML files. Second, Rails allows us to define views containing raw HTML, which Rails can render so that the web server can send it to the browser.

In order to get our bearings, it’s helpful to recall the Rails directory structure from Section 1.2.3 (Figure 1.2). In this section, we’ll be working mainly in the app/controllers and app/views directories.  (In Section 3.2, we’ll even add a new directory of our own.)

This is the first section where it’s useful to be able to open the entire Rails directory in your text editor or IDE. Unfortunately, how to do this is system-dependent, but in many cases you can open the current application directory, represented in Unix by a dot ., using the command-line command for your editor of choice:

 For example, to open the sample app in Sublime Text, you type

 For Vim, you type vim ., gvim ., or mvim ., depending on which flavor of Vim you use.