I'm writing a rails application, and in this one controller I need to specify the layout to render due to inheriting from ActionController::Base. In some of my other controllers I just have ActionController and it automatically uses the application layout. Whenever I remove the ::Base, I get the following message when accessing the page superclass must be a Class (Module given).
Why does inheriting from ActionController::Base in this controller matter, but not in the others?
To directly answer your question ActionController is not a controller class, it's a namespacing module that powers the entire controller stack. You would not interact with the ActionController module during typical Rails development. ActionController::Base is actually the class that controllers inherit from. This is why you can't inherit from ActionController.
But I think there are two controllers in play here. ActionController::Base and ApplicationController. I think you might be mistaking ApplicationController for being ActionController without the ::Base.
ActionController::Base is the main controller class where all of your Rails functionality comes from. ApplicationController is a generalized controller that you can add methods to and have all of your other Rails controllers inherit from.
You could do the following to use a different layout in one of your controllers:
class AuthenticationController < ApplicationController
layout 'authentication'
end
You can either use the AuthenticationController directly, or have new controllers inherit from AuthenticationController.
Your controllers should inherit from ApplicationController. This will allow them to automatically render the application layout. ApplicationController extends ActionController::Base.
