rails view without a controller

Question

Can rails handle creating a view without a controller? For example, let say I have a page that just links to other pages, would I need to create a dummy controller for that, or could I just do something in my routes file?

Answer 1

No. All requests has to go through a controller.

I like to have a PagesController, with map.page ":action", :controller => "pages". That way, I can create app/views/pages/foo.erb and have it available on /foo without any extra code.

Answer 2

Another option would be adding a static html file in your /public directory if you truly don't need it as part of your application.

Answer 3

If you are a brave soul. You can try edge rails 3. Katz demonstrated this possibility on his blog. Here is the link:

http://yehudakatz.com/2009/07/19/rails-3-the-great-decoupling/