Practical Rails Plugins (Expert's Voice in Web Development) [Paperback]

Nick Plante (Author), David Berube (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1590599934 | ISBN-13: 978-1590599938 | Publication Date: August 28, 2008 | Edition: 1

The meteoric ascent in popularity of the Rails framework is in large part due to the enormous productivity gains it has to offer. One reason for this productivity is a feature known as plugins, which enable developers to extend the Rails framework in a variety of interesting ways. What's more, these plugins can be shared with other Rails developers, and accordingly a vibrant plugin community has blossomed.

Practical Rails Plugins is the first book to comprehensively discuss Rails plugins, discussing many of the most popular plugins in the context of four real-world projects.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Nick Plante is the chief technical type at nth Metal Interactive and a partner in Ubikorp Internet Services. An accomplished network and web application developer, Nick specialized in Java and PHP projects before encountering the Ruby language. Since then he's been a vocal advocate in the Ruby on Rails community, co-organizing the NHRuby User Group and the 2007 Rails Rumble competiton. He also maintains a Ruby-centric blog a http://blog.zerosum.org.

Nick's professional accomplishments include work for various technology startups and creative firms, such as PortalVideo, DMOD, Verimatrix, Sterling Sound and Kosa Minore Creative, where he occasionally wrestles with nasty bits of ActionScript. Nick received a Masters Degree in Computer Science from Northeastern University in 2004 and has taught classes and spoken at events on several occaisions.

David Berube is a Ruby developer, trainer, author, and speaker. He’s used both Ruby and Ruby on Rails for several years, starting in 2003 when he became a Ruby advocate after he wrote about the language for Dr Dobb’s Journal. Prior to this he worked professionally with PHP, Perl, C++, and Visual Basic.

His professional accomplishments include creating the Ruby on Rails engine for CoolRuby.com (http://coolruby.com), a site that tracks the latest Ruby developments, and working with ThoughtBot (www.thoughtbot.com) on the Rails engine that powers Sermo America’s Top Doctor contest. Additionally, he has worked on several other Ruby projects, including the engine powering CyberKnowHow’s BirdFluBreakingNews search engine, and he also created the Slueshi text adventure game system, a multiplayer text game engine written in Ruby.

David’s journalism has been in print in over 65 countries, in magazines such as Linux Magazine, Dr Dobb’s Journal, and PHP International Magazine. He’s also taught college courses and spoken publicly on topics such as "MySQL and You" and "Making Money with Open Source Software."

Product Details

• Paperback: 512 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 1 edition (August 28, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590599934
• ISBN-13: 978-1590599938
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #299,673 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Really?!?!, January 7, 2009

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grantmichaels "grantmichaels" (sarasota, fl) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Practical Rails Plugins (Expert's Voice in Web Development) (Paperback)

I'm very surprised this book hasn't been reviewed, and while I've used it more as a reference - meaning that I didn't read it linearly - it is at once a book that I use more frequently than the others. If I'm mocking up an idea, or just trying to get something done, usually I'll either grab this book off the shelf and see if there is a quick solution, or fall back to one of the Rails Recipe books from Pragmatic Programmers. Rails plug-ins come, and Rails plug-ins go, but in peeking real quick, most all of the presented plug-ins are still good choices right now (January '09) ...

4.0 out of 5 stars Outdated, but a good resource, August 1, 2011

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Justin (California) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Practical Rails Plugins (Expert's Voice in Web Development) (Paperback)

Unfortunately, a lot of the plugins featured in this book are out of date, especially with the impending release of Rails 3.1. Others have been repackaged as gems, so they're viable but for many plugins more modern, feature-rich alternatives have come around. Still, I do use the book for the ins and outs of some of the plugins that are still around, like ActiveMerchant. For that, it's been a good reference. We need more books like this one, because a lot of plugins/gems are simply not documented well enough.