First Rails application - Mini Project: Build & Apply

First Rails application

📖 Scenario: You want to create a simple web app that shows a welcome message on the homepage. This is your first step into building with Rails, a popular web framework.

🎯 Goal: Build a basic Rails app with a homepage that displays the text "Welcome to My First Rails App!"

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a new Rails application named my_first_app

Generate a controller named home with an index action

Set the root route to the home#index action

Create a view for the index action that displays the welcome message

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Creating a basic Rails app is the first step to building websites and web services that can handle user requests and show dynamic content.

💼 Career

Understanding how to set up a Rails app, create controllers, routes, and views is essential for web developer roles that use Ruby on Rails.

1

Create a new Rails application

Run the command rails new my_first_app in your terminal to create a new Rails application named my_first_app.

Ruby on Rails

# Run the command below in your terminal
# rails new my_first_app

Need a hint?

Use the rails new command followed by the app name my_first_app.

2

Generate a controller with an index action

Inside the my_first_app directory, run rails generate controller home index to create a controller named home with an index action.

Ruby on Rails

# Run the command below in your terminal inside my_first_app folder
# rails generate controller home index

Need a hint?

Use rails generate controller home index to create the controller and action.

3

Set the root route to home#index

Open the file config/routes.rb and add the line root 'home#index' to set the homepage route to the index action of the home controller.

Ruby on Rails

Rails.application.routes.draw do
  # Set the root route here
  # Your code here
end

Need a hint?

In config/routes.rb, add root 'home#index' inside the Rails.application.routes.draw do block.

4

Create the view with welcome message

Open the file app/views/home/index.html.erb and add the line <h1>Welcome to My First Rails App!</h1> to display the welcome message on the homepage.

Ruby on Rails

Need a hint?

Edit app/views/home/index.html.erb and add an <h1> tag with the welcome text.