The [Layouts & Rendering Guide](layouts_and_rendering.html) explains this in more detail.
`ApplicationController` inherits from `ActionController::Base`, which defines a number of helpful methods. This guide will cover some of these, but if you're curious to see what's in there, you can see all of them in the API documentation or in the source itself.
`ApplicationController` inherits from `ActionController::Base`, which defines a number of helpful methods. This guide will cover some of these, but if you're curious to see what's in there, you can see all of them in the [API documentation](http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionController.html) or in the source itself.
Only public methods are callable as actions. It is a best practice to lower the visibility of methods (with `private` or `protected`) which are not intended to be actions, like auxiliary methods or filters.
