Beginning Ruby on Rails E-Commerce: From Novice to Professional (Paperback)

~ Christian Hellsten (Author), (Author)
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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Beginning Ruby on Rails E-Commerce: From Novice to Professional is the first book of its kind to guide you through producing e-commerce applications with Railsthe stacked web framework taking the world by storm. The book dives right into the process of creating a production-level web application using agile methodologies and test-driven development combined with Rails best practices. Youll take advantage of the latest crop of Rails plug-ins and helpers that will radically improve your programming schedule. Youll also create a real application step-by-step, plus the book is driven by real-world cases throughout.

You will begin by learning how to install Rails and quickly create a product catalog interfaced with your choice of database technologies. Then youll discover how to build modern, Ajax-powered shopping carts and add useful features like customer feedback modules. Next youll learn how to integrate your application with open source packages like the Ferret full-text search engine, and how to interface with back-end electronic payment systems. Youll also learn how to make your application work flawlessly with existing production systems using web services, and then ultimately deploy and tune your application for production use.

About the Author

Christian Hellsten is the founder of Aktagon Ltd., a provider of consulting services and custom Internet software development, and CTO of Sanda Interactive Ltd. He has worked on large-scale e-business projects as a consultant for PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting and IBM Business Consulting Services. Christian's background is in J2EE, but he fell in love with Ruby on Rails at first sight, and has been using it professionally ever since to build web applications. When he is not changing the diapers of his two young daughters at his home in Finland, Christian enjoys researching new and better ways of building software.

Jarkko Laine is the owner and CEO of O'Design, a Rails-based web design shop. He has been using Ruby on Rails since 2004 and has contributed patches to the core developer team, as well as contributing to several Rails plug-ins. He has provided Rails consultancy for a number of high-profile organizations, including a major mobile phone manufacturer, Starnet Systems, and Reforge Oy. He has also taught Rails at the university level and delivers lectures about Rails around the world. He lives in Tampere, Finland, with his girlfriend Maria and a growing list of pending household chores.

Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Apress (November 6, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590597362
• ISBN-13: 978-1590597361
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #364,598 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Good book ruined by sloppily coded examples, February 7, 2007

By	Ronald H. Bingham "Geek VP" (Sunnyvale, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

It's too bad this wonderfully written book is so full of errors. Did the authors run out of time to check the sample code? I spent days and days trying to get the sample code given in the book to work. The book version of the code didn't match the downloaded version and both were loaded with errors. After chapter four I gave it up as a lost cause. My list of errata was so extensive that I didn't bother to send it to the publisher because I had invested far too much time in the book already. I'm guessing the rave revues this book received were from readers that simply read the book and didn't try the sample application code.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Offers nothing, March 23, 2007

By	Hans C Masing - See all my reviews

While I really hate to slam down the authors of the book, this text really offers nothing to readers that isn't in better form elsewhere. The text is ridden with buggy code, incomplete explanations, and the style of coding leaves much to be desired. The "Agile Web Development with Rails" text (also available on [...]) builds nearly the same application (an eCommerce site), but does so while explaining the rails framework as well as offering up a solid reference textbook style for later use.

I teach graduate level computer science, and switched my curriculum to Ruby on Rails this term for my "Complex Websites" course. I reviewed many books, and this one ended up at the bottom of the pile. Sorry.

15 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Full of errors and instructions are missing..., December 11, 2006

By	uml_zepho_com "www_zepho_com" (Raleigh, NC United States) - See all my reviews

Beginners must stay away from this book. It does not mention anywhere that you must install RedCloth to get the textilize method working. There are too many errors in the book to mention them all here. The code given in the book fails to run due to a bug in the Rails code, one of the problem is due to the assert_tag bug in Rails. The fix shown on the reviewer's website does not solve all the problems. Again the book does not even mention about the workaround. After many hours of frustration you have to find out from other developers on the Rails mailing list.

For a beginner, it is very frustrating when the book fails to mention when the fixtures need to be updated to make the code work. Even after copying all the code for the corresponding chapters from the downloaded source, it still gives errors.

Buyers be careful about the other reviews giving 5 stars for this book. For an objective view and to see the problems with this book, search the Ruby on Rails mailing list on the title of this book. You will see how many developers are having the same problem.

You can buy this book only after the publisher fixes all the errors. Otherwise you will end up with lot frustration and wasted time and energy.