Learning Rails

by Simon St. Laurent, Edd Wilder-James

While most books written about Rails cater to programmers looking for information on data structures, Learning Rails targets web developers whose programming experience is tied directly to the Web. Rather than begin with the inner layers of a Rails web application--the models and controllers--this unique book approaches Rails development from the outer the application interface. You'll learn how to create something visible with Rails before reaching the more difficult database models and controller code. With Learning Rails, you can start from the foundations of web design you already know, and then move more deeply into Ruby, objects, and database structures. This book will help web content by building an application with a basic view and a simple controller, while learning Ruby along the way Build forms and process their results, progressing from the simple to the more complex Connect forms to models by se

Genres: Computers, Programming, Technology

417 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2008

About the author

Simon St. Laurent is a Content Manager at LinkedIn Learning, focusing primarily on front-end web projects. He has been co-chair of the Fluent conference and of OSCON. He's authored or co-authored books including Introducing Elixir, Introducing Erlang, Learning Rails 3, XML Pocket Reference, 3rd, XML: A Primer, and Cookies.

You can find more of his writing on technology, Quakerism, and the Town of Dryden at simonstl.com.

Reviews

[Nate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Learning Rails was a solid introductory guide to Rails. I feel like I now have a good foundation to build on, but some of that may be due to my previous experience with other programming languages.

The book, for the most part, sticks to the MVC and DRY philosophies of Rails. Unfortunately, there were some small sections where the authors broke from this without an explanation. For example, one code example puts DB Select code in the View, rather than the Controller.

However, my biggest gripe with the book was the high number of errata. If you read this book, make sure you have the errata page open on O'Reilly's website. Many of the errors could have been avoided had the authors spent a week to read through the entire book again.

All in all, the book was very helpful, but the errata turned a 4 or 5 star book into 3 stars for me.

[Nicholas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Far more in depth than the last one I read. Hard to follow. Seemed to be missing a sort of overall structure. It just went through a bunch of problems you'd face and how to solve them. Good follow up but I was right about the Head First Book being a much better introduction.

Skipped the ajax stuff at the end. I need to get an AJAX book. Seems like something I'm going to need to know.

[John Chilton · Rating 2 out of 5]

I bought this book because Agile Web Development wasn't at the bookstore, please don't make the same mistake.