Customer Reviews

Building Dynamic Web 2.0 Websites with Ruby on Rails: Create database-driven dynamic websites with this open-source web application framework

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Massive interest in Ruby on Rails over the past few years was quickly mirrored in book sales. Early entrants like the (near definitive) Agile Web Development with Ruby on Rails were break away hits in a world that usually sees modest sales of each title. It's not surprising a lot of people wanted to get a share of that market, and the range of Ruby and Rails titles has exploded, with an unsurprising dip in average quality.

This latest title from Packt sits somewhere very low down the quality scale. An unfocussed volume, it purports to introduce the ruby language and show how to get up and running with a simple buzzword-laden Rails application, but does a distinctly inadequate job on both counts. Any moderately experienced rubyist would worry at seeing code like:

class Tale
@author
@genre
@tale_body
end

recommended as the way to define a class with three attributes, rather than the more succinct, idiomatic and functional:

class Tale
attr_accessor :author, :genre, :tale_body
end

(For those unfamiliar with ruby, the former will define attributes but not accessors for them. The latter will define the attributes and its accessors and is the recommended approach for public attributes)

That example occurs early on, and as the book progresses it is hard to shake the sense that the author isn't sufficiently familiar with the idioms and best practices of the Ruby and Rails communities to be introducing either the language or the framework. When working with a framework as dependent on conventions and opinions as Rails, a failure to grasp the idioms is a serious problem.

It would be hard to recommend this book even if there weren't many superior titles available. Newcomers to Ruby and/or Rails would be far better with any of several alternatives. Beyond that, while packt have published a number of excellent titles, the publication of this book should be taken as a reminder that there is no consistent quality control over the books they publish and buyers should research carefully before buying one.

Disclaimer: I was sent a copy of this book for review by the publisher.

I have just cracked this book open and started skimming it. It looks like it might be a pretty good resource for Rails 1.2.6.

But version 2.0 of Rails was released four months before this book's publication date, and announced long before that. I'm very surprised that this book wasn't based on that current version. There are significant differences between Rails 1.2.6 and 2.0.

Most potential readers of this book should get one that covers Rails 2.0 instead.

Boy, I wish I had a chance to see the reviews here before I bought this book. I very rarely take the time to post a review, but this book is the most disappointing technical book I've read in all my memory.

As a concept is introduced, it starts with a small example and builds on it. But every time a new line is added to the example, the entire example is reproduced. Within a few pages the examples are taking an entire page of text; almost exactly the same text that was on the previous page.

The code formatting is inconsistent, showing a lack of care by the author and proofreader.

At times new concepts are introduced with no explanation, leaving the reader to wonder if it was a typo or not.

The prose is oddly formal and excruciatingly verbose. Sentences are constantly repeated in slightly different ways. English is clearly not the strong suit of the author, which can be fine if a solid editor is involved. Unfortunately, that's not the case here.

I'll admit I only got a few chapters in before I gave up in order to retain my sanity. It struck me as odd that in a book so thin (which can be a great thing in a technical book - K&R's C book a prime example), the author appeared to be attempting to stretch it out as far as he could go.

Anyway, listen to the other reviews on this site and pick up _Agile Web Development with Rails_ instead - I bought a pdf of the latest beta of the 3rd edition, and it's excellent.

If you are trying to get some experience and learn how to program with Ruby on Rails "Building Dynamic Websites with Ruby on Rails" is the perfect starting point. The author gives you step-by-step examples and clearly explains how to use the classes, modules, or other code blocks. This is a great starting point for someone who is new to object orientated programming or even the experience programmer looking to challenge his or her programing skills by learning Ruby.

The first few chapters of the book go over the basics of programing with Ruby by creating classes, modules, arrays as well as many other objects and data types. Also within those chapters is the installation and configuration of Ruby, Gems, and Apache, this is very helpful for a new programmer who does not have experience building a development environment.

Here is where the book starts to advance your knowledge of application development with Ruby on Rails by starting a sample application that manages users, database schema and database content. If you are new to MySQL this book will also help with the creation of a mysql database, tables, primary keys and inserting data into the database. If you are an experienced programmer there is also plenty for you to learn as well with the development of views, templates, and scaffold.

In chapter 8 the book gets into the good stuff by showing examples of integrating Ajax with RoR, if you aren't familiar with Ajax it is a programing language that enhances the user experience of your application. Ajax provides asynchronous communication with your web application, which allows for a more responsive interface versus traditional synchronous web pages. This means the user is in constant communication with the database or other end of the web application and does not wait for the user to click a button or refresh the page. This gives programmers tools to be able to interact with a user like never before for searching and editing records.

Overall the book is very helpful for anyone interested in learning RoR, by following the book through the chapters you will create a sample application showing you what steps to take when building your own app. The book is very detailed when going into more advanced topics such as Ajax where it describes reasons for using Ajax and how to implement it. Using this book as a guide will give anyone the ability to create a completely custom RoR application.

I spent an hour flipping through this, and found many passages that I either could not understand, or couln't understand why they coded things the way they did, or why they used space in the book to print these convoluted explanations. This from somebody who's worked with ruby intensively for several years, and rails for over a year, I know the framework pretty well. I found the writing in this book is very unfocussed and, rather than benefitting from good editing, they needed an author who knows Rails and communicates well.