Build your first application

While following the Build the first application -> https://codeigniter.com/user_guide/tutor...pages.html --Static pages. Behavior is different then what is documented:

localhost:8080/pages  --> http://localhost/ci-news/public/

For each URL listed in Documentation, I have to specify public otherwise it doesn't work. How to remove the requirement to always put public in for the documentation to work?

**Not executing php spark serve as I am running xampp.

Files are located under /htdocs/ci-news.

Moreover, as soon as I add the routes $routes->get('(:any)', 'Pages::view/$1'); in app/Config/Routes.php it starts giving the 404 not found errors.

----Pages controller------
<?php namespace App\Controllers;

use CodeIgniter\Controller;

class Pages extends Controller
{
public function index()
{
return view('welcome_message');
}

public function view($page = 'home')
{
if ( ! is_file(APPPATH.'/Views/pages/'.$page.'.php'))
{
// Whoops, we don't have a page for that!
throw new \CodeIgniter\Exceptions\PageNotFoundException($page);
}

$data['title'] = ucfirst($page); // Capitalize the first letter

echo view('templates/header', $data);
echo view('pages/'.$page, $data);
echo view('templates/footer', $data);
}
}
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Thanks,