The Rails Way

Addison-Wesley Professional Ruby Series

by Obie Fernandez, David Heinemeier Hansson (Foreword)

The expert guide to building Ruby on Rails applications Ruby on Rails strips complexity from the development process, enabling professional developers to focus on what matters most: delivering business value. Now, for the first time, there s a comprehensive, authoritative guide to building production-quality software with Rails. Pioneering Rails developer Obie Fernandez and a team of experts illuminate the entire Rails API, along with the Ruby idioms, design approaches, libraries, and plug-ins that make Rails so valuable. Drawing on their unsurpassed experience, they address the real challenges development teams face, showing how to use Rails tools and best practices to maximize productivity and build polished applications users will enjoy. Using detailed code examples, Obie systematically covers Rails key capabilities and subsystems. He presents advanced programming techniques, introduces open source libraries that facilitate easy Rails adoption, and offers important insights into testing and production deployment. Dive deep into the Rails codebase together, discovering why Rails behaves as it does and how to make it behave the way you want it to. This book will help you Increase your productivity as a web developer Realize the overall joy of programming with Ruby on Rails Learn what s new in Rails 2.0 Drive design and protect long-term maintainability with TestUnit and RSpec Understand and manage complex program flow in Rails controllers Leverage Rails support for designing REST-compliant APIs Master sophisticated Rails routing concepts and techniques Examine and troubleshoot Rails routing Make the most of ActiveRecord object-relational mapping Utilize Ajax within your Rails applications Incorporate logins and authentication into your application Extend Rails with the best third-party plug-ins and write your own Integrate email services into your applications with ActionMailer Choose the right Rails production configurations Streamline deployment with Capistrano "

Genres: Programming, Technical, Technology, Nonfiction, Computers, Reference, Software

851 pages, Paperback

First published November 16, 2007

Reviews

[Adrian · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's better than Agile Web Development w/Rails (despite the grammatical error in the first sentence of the foreword -- don't judge it by that). It is also an intermediate to semi-advanced text, so don't expect a tutorial on how to build a shopping cart.

I particularly enjoyed some of the sidebar quips -- "Wilson says... Writing applications without tests makes you a bad person, incapable of love." -- although I don't necessarily agree with them all.

The chapters on controllers, routing, views are decent. I've read the ActionPack/ActiveSupport source and this is easier to digest (along with appendix A). The four chapters on ActiveRecord are as boring as, well, ActiveRecord. What can you do?

I find the code generated by Rails's Ajax helpers very ugly & obtrusive, so I skipped that chapter. Learn Javascript, or at least a decent JS library like jQuery or YUI. Actually, I've got nothing against Prototype or Mootools either, just the way Rails embeds it.

Similarly, skip the Testing chapter and jump straight to the one on RSpec.

Finally, the production configuration and deployment chapters, like much of the book, offer some good advice that will save you time. I've learned from experience and trial & error much of what Obie says here, and it would have been great to have this cheatsheet 6-8 months ago. Better late than never!

[Michael Economy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Its ok, though i usually use the online rdocs instead, since rails is under such heavy development I don't think its practical to buy any rails book thats over 3 months old.

This guy definitely is a better coder than dave thomas.

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book that finally made the Rails web application framework (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_on_...) truly understandable to me. I read the Pragmatic Rails book, but it was not as clear and detailed as this book.

[Ben Cavileer · Rating 4 out of 5]

The ultimate Rails desk reference. Essential for anyone looking to develop quality Rails apps. The book will increase programming productivity and enjoyment with well thought written examples. Covers Rails 2.0, Testing, Ajax, E-Mail, deployment... etc.

[Manda Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not quite a reference book, but does read like one.

[Josef Materi]

Pretty intense Reference for everything Rails

[Dean Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

A long winded book on Rails. Great for reference and learning.

[Aditya Agustyana · Rating 5 out of 5]

love the tips, it's range from simple to complex problems, must have if you're Ruby on Rails professional developer

[Brian Rivard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pound for pound, a great book. Excellent reference. What it doesn't cover it points you to in the Rails source code. Well worth the money.

[Steven · Rating 3 out of 5]

Excellent introductory book to Ruby on Rails for the practicing developer.

[Harry Yeh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the original version of the book, there is a newer one that has come out. Great reference for the Rails framework but tougher to read if you are looking for a tutorial.