Rails 3 Routing - How Do I Use Parameters from the Root Route?

I'm new to Rails and have run into a roadblock with routes in a small app I'm writing -

I would like to use the root route to to map parameters to a particular controller -

For example, lets say I have a controller, 开发者_开发百科VariablePageController, that will render different content based on the parameter in the URL.

So when someone visits my site, mysite.com will go to a home page, but mysite.com/[pagename] will go through my VariablePageController, but the user will stay at mysite.com/[pagename] and NOT mysite.com/VariablePage/[pagename] -

The variable [pagename] is dynamically generated, so I can't list all possibilities in the routes.rb...

How would achieve this effect with routing?

Alright, I found the answer, for anyone interested...

What I essentially wanted, but I guess didn't describe well, was 'slug-style' or 'friendly' urls based off of the URL root rather than a /controller/ route.

To accomplish this - do something like this in routes.rb: Standard Home Page Route

root :to => "page#index"

Parameter-Based Home Route

match ':url' => "page#show"

You can do a simple named route like

match '/pagename' => "variablepage#pagename", :as => "pagename"

then your link would look as follows

<%= link_to pagename, pagename_path %>

or

<%= link_to "pagename", pagename_path %>

after that in your variablepage controller you have

def pagename
.....
end

i hope this helps you