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Build Your Own Ruby on Rails Web Applications
Want to learn all about Ruby on Rails, the web application framework that is inspiring developers around the world? This practical hands-on guide for first-time Ruby on Rails programmers will walk you through installing the required software on a Windows, Mac or Linux computer. And before you get coding, an entire chapter is devoted to object oriented programming in Ruby, so you'll be completely confident with the Ruby language before you begin working with Rails. The example application that the book builds - a user-generated news web site - is built upon with each following chapter, and concepts such as sessions, cookies and basic AJAX usage are gradually introduced. Different aspects of Rails, such as ActiveRecord, migrations and automated testing are explored with each feature that is added to the application. The book finishes with chapters on debugging, benchmarking and deployment to a live web server. By the end of the book, you'll have built a fully-featured Web 2.0 application and deployed it to the Web. And all code is up-to-date for Rails 1.2, so you can begin coding immediately with the latest version of Rails.
- GenresProgrammingComputers
447 pages, Paperback
First published January 30, 2007
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19 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 16, 2010
Patrick Lenz, Build Your Own Ruby on Rails Web Applications (Sitepoint, 2007)
The main problem with a technology that's advancing as fast as Ruby on Rails is that by the time the books become affordable, they're out of date. It's that aspect of Build Your Own Ruby on Rails Web Applications that makes the rating I'm giving it so low; it would have another star were it still up to date, but there are things Lenz tells us how to do in Rails 1.2 that no longer work in later versions (for example, setting up a column in a migration using “t.column :name, :string” will now throw an error; as I write this, the current syntax would be “t.string :name”, but by the time you read this, that will have probably changed again). There are also a small number of errors in proofreading (in the testing of the application he builds over the course of the book, he changes the name of one variable from :another to :second, then a few chapters later wants us to add values to :another) and one philosophical stance that's bound to drive some folks nuts (he advocates writing unit tests after writing code, which often leads to the programmer writing the tests to accommodate the code rather than the other way around). So much for the book's shortcomings.
Other than that, though, I thought this was really useful. Given that one of those problems is an annoyance at best and one of them is an opinion more than a problem, that leaves you with a book that, were it updated, would be pretty darned good still. Lenz takes you through the building and testing of a fully functional web application (a Digg clone). While he doesn't get into some of the more advanced features that Ruby on Rails makes easier for the programmer, I'm realizing, the more books on Rails I read, that none of them do, so I can't count points off for that. At the end of the book, after all, you do end up with a functional, if somewhat barebones, application, and you learn a decent amount along the way. A new edition covering Rails 2.3 would be most welcome, Unfortunately, by the time it was ready for press, Rails would probably be another three versions down the road, and so the circle continues. ** ½
The main problem with a technology that's advancing as fast as Ruby on Rails is that by the time the books become affordable, they're out of date. It's that aspect of Build Your Own Ruby on Rails Web Applications that makes the rating I'm giving it so low; it would have another star were it still up to date, but there are things Lenz tells us how to do in Rails 1.2 that no longer work in later versions (for example, setting up a column in a migration using “t.column :name, :string” will now throw an error; as I write this, the current syntax would be “t.string :name”, but by the time you read this, that will have probably changed again). There are also a small number of errors in proofreading (in the testing of the application he builds over the course of the book, he changes the name of one variable from :another to :second, then a few chapters later wants us to add values to :another) and one philosophical stance that's bound to drive some folks nuts (he advocates writing unit tests after writing code, which often leads to the programmer writing the tests to accommodate the code rather than the other way around). So much for the book's shortcomings.
Other than that, though, I thought this was really useful. Given that one of those problems is an annoyance at best and one of them is an opinion more than a problem, that leaves you with a book that, were it updated, would be pretty darned good still. Lenz takes you through the building and testing of a fully functional web application (a Digg clone). While he doesn't get into some of the more advanced features that Ruby on Rails makes easier for the programmer, I'm realizing, the more books on Rails I read, that none of them do, so I can't count points off for that. At the end of the book, after all, you do end up with a functional, if somewhat barebones, application, and you learn a decent amount along the way. A new edition covering Rails 2.3 would be most welcome, Unfortunately, by the time it was ready for press, Rails would probably be another three versions down the road, and so the circle continues. ** ½
April 11, 2007
Very nice tutorial. . . clean language and a good beginning when learning about Ruby on Rails.
September 3, 2007
I've only got through the first chapter so far, but I like what I've read. It's doing a good job of introducing the basic concepts to an audience that doesn't have a background in programming.
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April 24, 2008Great for Rails beginners, but now that Rails 2.0 is out, somewhat outdated.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews