3.11. The RESTful Rails Action Set

Rails REST facilities, ultimately, are about named routes and the controller actions to which they point. The more you use RESTful Rails, the more you get to know each of the seven RESTful actions. How they work across different controllers (and different applications) is of course somewhat different. Still, perhaps because there’s a finite number of them and their roles are fairly well-delineated, each of the seven tends to have fairly consistent properties and a characteristic feel to it.

We’re going to take a look at each of the seven actions, with examples and comments. You’ll encounter all of them again, particularly in Chapter 4, Working with Controllers, but here you’ll get some backstory and start to get a sense of the characteristic usage of them and issues and choices associated with them.