Customer Reviews

Beginning Rails 3 (Expert's Voice in Web Development)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Every Rails books needs to set the stage, to "explain the rules" so to speak, since using Rails is quite different from other "traditional" approaches of web development (LAMP, etc.). Beginning Rails 3 sets the stage nicely, and continues to deliver throughout the entire text - at least, until it comes to getting your Rails app on the web.

The first three chapters follow the typical pattern of a Rails book, explaining the origins of Rails, why it's good, how to install it, and then setting up a very simple web app so the reader can see how easy it is to get Rails up and running. One thing I liked in particular was in Chapter 1, where the authors stressed the importance of being open to the "Rails way" of doing things. This was a nice touch, as there's a good chance the "Rails way" is different from what the reader is expecting, especially if they have some experience developing with PHP.

From there the authors continue to get more in-depth on the various aspects of Rails, focusing on Active Record (the database aspect of a web app) and Active Pack (the "bridge" between the user interface and the database) for the first half of the book. Readers who prefer the programming aspect of development will enjoy these chapters, though they do get a bit dry to read in some places, with some sections (throughout the book actually) being virtually nothing but code for several pages.

One key thing to note at this point is that beginning with version 3, Rails is much more modular than before. This makes it much easier to "take out" things you don't need, or switch certain portions for something else (like using HAML for building your HTML templates instead of eRB, or DataMapper in place of ActiveRecord). It would have been great to see examples of how to do this, rather than just mentioning it's possible, but then that might push this beyond a "beginner's" book.

Web designers more interested in the user interface aspects of a web app will enjoy Chapter 8, which goes over Rails' Ajax support. I would have preferred this chapter to be a bit more in-depth, but I like the fact that the authors covered how to switch from the built-in Prototype library to jQuery, which is more common and better suited (in my opinion) for Rails development.

Chapter 9, "Sending and Receiving E-Mail" was a welcome surprise. In previous Rails books I've read (Simply Rails 2.0 and Foundation Rails 2) I don't remember this being mentioned - but it's such a common requirement for web apps, that almost every Rails developer needs to learn how to do this as some point.

It seems that many Rails newbies (like myself) are also somewhat new to programming in general, and we often don't quite grasp the importance of testing a web app to make sure it works properly and can handle errors and unforeseen difficulties with grace. Chapter 10 stresses the importance of testing a Rails app, and points out that testing is something you're probably already doing to some degree (though perhaps just by hand on an "ad-hoc" basis).

Rails has a very systematic way of testing, and this was a good (though hardly exciting) overview of how to test the various aspects of the web app you've been building (if you've been following along and typing in code as you've been reading - you can also download the code rather than type it all out, if you prefer, and links are provided at the beginning of each chapter).

I was a bit surprised that Internationalization was covered in this book, as it's something most people (in English-speaking countries at any rate) don't usually think about until after their app has been deployed. Fortunately, an entire chapter is devoted to Internationalization, and this was a really nice touch.

It's a very rare Rails developer that doesn't, at some point, want to add some sort of plugin to extend the functionality of the web app they're building. Chapter 12 goes over how to do this, even covering how to create and add your own plugin to Rails.

Probably my biggest expectation for this book was Chapter 13, which goes over deploying a Rails app to the web. It's just not simply uploading the finished files to a server (I wish!), and I have yet to come across a book that really nails this well, so that it's easy to understand for "traditional" web designers. Unfortunately, this chapter is lacking. It does cover Capistrano and Phusion Passenger, which really help ease the deployment of a Rails app to the web, but instead of also explaining a bit about server configuration (for those who want or have to do it themselves) there is instead a section preaching the benefits of outsourcing this to your hosting company, recommending you stay away from cheap Rails hosts (which I agree with, to a point) and instead use an experienced Rails-specific host.

I understand the reasons behind the authors' choice in this matter, as it's simply too much to expect new Rails developers to become experts in server configuration, but for companies or independent developers on a shoestring budget, high quality (read "expensive" here) Rails hosts may not be an option. I personally wanted to know how to do this, even if I decide not to do so with a real web app. As such, having more in-depth information about Rails deployment is, in my mind, necessary in a book like this (even if the reader decides not to do it themselves). This is a serious omission, in my opinion, and mars an otherwise great book.

Beginning Rails 3 is a great resource for those who are new the Rails, covering most of the key aspects of Rails 3 web development. Unfortunately, it falls short when it comes to actually explaining how to get your Rails app out into the world.

Beginning Rails 3 is a book that does a great job introducing an aspiring web developer to the world of Ruby on Rails, and the architecture conventions that Rails utilizes. The book is a good size, goes over the 'hows' and 'whys' of the basics, while creating a useful example project.

I work as a Web Designer that is starting to branch into development, and I had some experience with earlier versions of Rails in a couple work environments, but never really caught on to the concept. This book helped clear quite a few things up. Previous "beginner" books I had read didn't explain fully enough, didn't flow well, or were written as what seemed like edited versions of more advanced books. The authors of Beginning Rails 3 do an excellent job of explaining each step. There is a good balance of code entry and explanation, and does not stray from the current topics. The instruction comes across at a decent personal level--as if the authors are there sitting at a table with you over a cup of coffee. Each chapter was also easy to retain in memory. There are also a couple of nice appendices, which give primers for Databases and the Ruby language itself.

The project is a blog, which is quite relevant, and can be utilized once completed. Many Rails books in the past have dealt with projects or examples that are hard to build on once learned, such as a store (without anything to sell), or small examples that can't be built upon. I found the project itself to be a key benefit of this book, and plan on deploying for my own blog once I make a few modifications.

I really enjoyed this book. Lately, it seems like beginner's books are a bit too dumbed down, or are written in an almost juvenile matter. This book was different, and had a very professional approach with true real-world exercises. I recommend this book for anyone who has some knowledge of the field, but needs a firm foundation for getting to the next step.

Although my skills are a bit more developed over a novice, there are still some rails topics I get caught up on and have trouble pushing my brain past to get me into the intermediate level. This book cleared up most of my weak areas in my code and even allowed me to add a few golden nuggets to my code that I never would have had otherwise. Ajax for example is a topic in this book that it touches on briefly but is a great start to branching out further into this direction in making your code feel like a legit asynchronous application using jQuery. Also the new action mailer is described in this book which is something I haven't had time to really go over yet and it seems easy enough from the examples. Of course the book goes through just about every aspect of rails that you can get without feeling to overwhelmed and I think most beginners will have a great time learning with this book as its clear and concise.

What I liked most about the book is that it is very descriptive at describing each of the different aspect of rails, which allows you to wrap your head around the assumptions so you are not left wondering why things are the way they are or how they work.

The application you build is a blog application and although its a bit redundant in today's web-based applications, its a concept people understand fairly well and so it makes it easier to digest when going through the examples.

I highly recommend this book to any beginner or intermediate user who is searching for some knowledge in the new Rails 3 world and needs to get up to speed with this fast paced framework. I hope the author comes out with a sequel more geared for intermediate+ users so we can learn to do more customizations, ajaxiness, and get into the meatier stuff that you see in ruby on rails applications today.

At last, this is the book for PHP / ASP developers at various levels who over the years have dabbled with Rails 1 and 2, read various introductory texts, but somehow never came away with a satisfying understanding of the subject. Learning a new tool is a hurdle and many Rails texts cover too much non-central stuff up front and then are surface level on the meaty stuff that follows. Early chapter distractions are exhausting and cause readers to give up (why bother?) before they see the light on how Rails more elegantly performs application functions they are familiar with.

What I like about this book is that it plunges right in with comprehensive, in depth and insightful coverage of the main Rails topics: active record (especially good), action pack, ajax and email, followed by good discussions of testing, internationalization, deployment and plugins. The chapters are long (perhaps a bit too long) and to get real value you have to stop and work the code on your computer - but that's true with any serious learning.

On the negative side I am a bit skeptical that the average programming novice can readily master the material in this book without some side catch-up study - such as found in many free introductory tutorials on the web. The book does not offer a slow-paced measured tutorial development of concepts - it's real world Rails. In fact, I think any reader needs to be willing at times to skim sections that may not be readily understandable until later topics are covered, and then come back. (For example, I found this to be the case with "routing/REST" that I now finally understand). In the end it is well worth it.

This is an excellent introduction to Rails development. I have been back and forth from Rails to Django and Python and Ruby respectively but after reading this book, it confirmed that Rails is the best web development framework for me. I struggled with the Agile Web Development Book from the Pragmatic Programmers, thought it is a great book, because it assumes a certain level of web development experience already. I come from the desktop world and have been looking to transition and this book was exactly what I needed to get started. Since I have read this book I have moved on to other more advanced Ruby and Rails books and am not looking back. Can't recommend it enough!

I have been programming Rails on and off since 2006 so I am probably not the target audience for this book. Nevertheless I still decided to pick it up for a recent Rails 3 project and I am glad I did. Rails has changed tremendously over the years and not all authors provide the most recent information on how to implement a modern web app in Rails. Not so with this book, the authors provide great up2date information on using rails, how to approach the most common features in a web app, including security, database mapping and testing. In short a great book for novices that even contains some useful information for people with Rails experience.

I'm not so long ago began to study the Rails. But faced with the fact don't have good documentation on the rails 3 (on the Edge) on my native language (Russian). In fact my English is not very good as I want it to be and I read not much literature in English 'cause it was difficult for me. This book has become for me a godsend. It reads very easily and everything in it was definitely clear to me. I almost didn't use a dictionary. Thank you very much to the authors for their work.

The only disappointment was the fact that I was not able to order this book through Amazon and I had to buy it from re-sellers for 3 prices. But this is not the fault of the authors =) Just I'm still living in a country of the third echelon :(

I'd played around with Rails in the past, and you can probably get by pretty well relying on online resources, but when I decided to get serious I knew I had to turn to a book like this one. Overall, this book did the trick for me. I've still got a long way to go, but I no longer feel bewildered by the basics.

I'll leave it to other reviewers to give a detailed analysis of the books pedagogy. The structure and course of the book didn't fit me exactly, but it was a good place for me to start.

I will leave one complaint, however: I purchased the Kindle edition of this book. Among the reasons to choose a kindle edition of a reference book is the ability to search the contents of the book when you're looking for a quick bit of info. That's especially important in a book like this which is laid out in a more narrative-like way rather than being broken down into logical topical sections. So, I was bummed to find out that none of the actual ruby code in the book is included when searching the text! This means that if I search for a method name like "accepts_nested_attributes_for" I am unlikely to find anything because all of the chunks of code have been separately formatted as images rather than as raw text.

So, I do recommend the book, but I don't recommend the Kindle version. YMMV.

With some caveats, I found Beginning Rails 3 to be a superb and useful introduction to Rails 3. The material held together from start to finish; I was able to follow through the code and topics from start to finish, and each step improved my knowledge and understanding. I would characterize the author's style and book at large, as patient and thorough; taking great effort to pause to emphasize or elaborate on subtle differences and underlying-motivations both in Rails at large and in implementing specific applications. Having read many other web development books before, I have not seen writing as thorough in detail and holding-together across the whole book. It's hard to put together a book like this, compounded by the rapid changes in the technologies underlying the material itself, but (as of the state of September 2010 technologies) these authors managed to mostly pull it off.

My caveats at once, fall somewhere in the spectrum between philosophical and fundamental, as well as, point to another equally impressive (but with caveats as well) book released around the same time, namely Ruby on Rails 3 Tutorial by Michael Hartl. Namely, this other book really embraces and showcases current and core Rails concepts and ecosystems, namely test-driven-development, git, heroku, rvm as well as other items, as the foundation of Rails application development pervasive throughout the book, whereas Beginning Rails 3 merely includes standalone chapters on testing and git. Conversely, though, this other book Ruby on Rails 3 Tutorial, does not provide the above noted and appreciated thoroughness that Beginning Rails 3 does. I believe that both of these books are worthwhile, and if you have the time and motivation, are easy, complementary, and complete enough, to recommend learning from both other them, as each one brought (easy and useful) understanding.

As a footnote, once you learn the basics of Rails from these books, I then found The Rails 3 Way by Obie Fernandez to really flesh-out understanding and skills, as well as, what appears to be a sleeper book, Enterprise Rails by Dan Chak, which I believe is really important for anyone anticipating a Rails-based application that scales (in every sense - performance, development, data-integrity). If you need the starting background in Ruby, I found that Programming Ruby by Dave Thomas did the job and did it well.

A good bit of the code in the kindle version is very difficult to read. It shows up in very light gray and is very small (and does not scale).