Rails issue with rendering - ruby-on-rails

Question

so I'm new to rails and currently going through a tutorial for it on tutorialspoint. What I've gotten so far is a controller and a corresponding view for it which is an erb file. This is the code for the view:
<% if #books.blank? %>
<p>There are not any books currently in the system.</p>
<% else %>
<p>These are the current books in our system</p>
<ul id = "books">
<% #books.each do |c| %>
<li><%= link_to c.title, {:action => 'show', :id => c.id} -%></li>
<% end %>
</ul>
<% end %>
<p><%= link_to "Add new Book", {:action => 'new' }%></p>
However, when I try to view this through localhost:3000 while having the
rails server
command running a WEBrick server in the background on localhost:3000,
it keeps directing me to the default view on my browser,which is being rendered by the server from the following path:
/Users/hassanali/.rbenv/versions/2.2.3/lib/ruby/gems/2.2.0/gems/railties-4.2.4/lib/rails/templates/rails/welcome/index.html.erb
instead of the actual view within my rails application folder's view folder..which is
/Users/hassanali/Desktop/library/app/views/book/list.html.erb
I've been trying to fix this for ages now and no avail. Does anyone know what I can do?

Answer 1

Because you not define root_path for your app.
In config/routes.rb define root_path for it, ex:
root 'book#list'

Answer 2

You can tell Rails what you want '/' to route to by using root controller#action.
For example say you had a controller that looked like this.
class BooksController < ActionController::Base
def index
#books = Books.all
end
def show
#book = Books.find(params[:id])
end
end
If you wanted '/' to route to your index method, you would do the following in config/routes.rb.
Rails.application.routes.draw do
root 'books#index'
# Other routes here...
end
As a side note, if you add two root method calls, it will use the last one in the routes file.
http://guides.rubyonrails.org/routing.html#using-root
Since you have show and new action referenced you'll also likely want those routes as well. It's recommended to use RESTful routing schemes. Rails provides a useful method called resources which creates all the routes and helper methods needed to CRUD a resource.
That might look like the following.
Rails.application.routes.draw do
root 'books#index'
# A books resource
resources :books
end
http://guides.rubyonrails.org/routing.html#crud-verbs-and-actions
I encourage you to read the Rails Guide on routing so you understand your options.