Rails AntiPatterns: Best Practice Ruby on Rails Refactoring (Addison-Wesley Professional Ruby Series) [Paperback]

Chad Pytel (Author), Tammer Saleh (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 19, 2010 | ISBN-10: 0321604814 | ISBN-13: 978-0321604811 | Edition: 1

The Complete Guide to Avoiding and Fixing Common Rails 3 Code and Design Problems

As developers worldwide have adopted the powerful Ruby on Rails web framework, many have fallen victim to common mistakes that reduce code quality, performance, reliability, stability, scalability, and maintainability. Rails™ AntiPatterns identifies these widespread Rails code and design problems, explains why they’re bad and why they happen—and shows exactly what to do instead.

The book is organized into concise, modular chapters—each outlines a single common AntiPattern and offers detailed, cookbook-style code solutions that were previously difficult or impossible to find. Leading Rails developers Chad Pytel and Tammer Saleh also offer specific guidance for refactoring existing bad code or design to reflect sound object-oriented principles and established Rails best practices. With their help, developers, architects, and testers can dramatically improve new and existing applications, avoid future problems, and establish superior Rails coding standards throughout their organizations.

 

This book will help you understand, avoid, and solve problems with

•  Model layer code, from general object-oriented programming violations to complex SQL and excessive redundancy
• Domain modeling, including schema and database issues such as normalization and serialization
• View layer tools and conventions
• Controller-layer code, including RESTful code
• Service-related APIs, including timeouts, exceptions, backgrounding, and response codes
• Third-party code, including plug-ins and gems
• Testing, from test suites to test-driven development processes
• Scaling and deployment
• Database issues, including migrations and validations
• System design for “graceful degradation” in the real world

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Chad Pytel is the founder and CEO of thoughtbot, a software development firm specializing in Ruby on Rails, and creators of Paperclip, Shoulda, FactoryGirl, and Hoptoad, among other projects. thoughtbot embraces both agile development methodologies and a “getting real” project philosophy. Chad coauthored Pro Active Record: Databases with Ruby and Rails (Apress, 2007) and has presented at various conferences around the world. To follow along with Chad and the rest of the thoughtbot team’s ideas on development, design, technology, and business, visit their blog at http://robots.thoughtbot.com.

Tammer Saleh is the director of engineering at Engine Yard. He wrote the Shoulda testing framework, was the primary developer and project manager for thoughtbot’s fantastic Hoptoad service, and is an experienced Ruby on Rails trainer and speaker. In previous lives, he’s done AI development for the NCSA and the University of Illinois, as well as systems administration for both Citysearch.com and Caltech’s Earthquake Detection Network. You can find him online at http://tammersaleh.com.

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 1 edition (November 19, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321604814
• ISBN-13: 978-0321604811
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #194,496 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally, a Rails book worth reading!!!, March 17, 2011

By 

Robert A. Phillips - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Rails AntiPatterns: Best Practice Ruby on Rails Refactoring (Addison-Wesley Professional Ruby Series) (Paperback)

I'll be honest, prior to reading this book I was starting to lose faith in Ruby on Rails authors. As a beginner to Rails, I've read a number of books to try and make sense of all the black magic going on behind the scenes as well as how to write great code in Rails. Many of those books were either "paint by number" tutorials where you didn't really learn anything appreciable or very complete (and hard to comprehend) reference manuals for everything there is to possibly know about Rails.

I just needed a good in between book! This book not only exposes you to the Rails Way of writing code in Ruby on Rails, it also gives many of the opposing examples which I would more than likely stumble down not knowing any better.

Not only that, but this is one of the most logically organized books I have ever had the pleasure to read. Everything flows together very nicely and is very understandable for beginners let alone more advanced users.

I would recommend this book in a heart beat (and I already have... many, many times). Great job guys! I really appreciate the effort you put into writing this book! You have restored my faith in Rails authors!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic source of refactoring ideas, December 9, 2010

By 

Michael Doel - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Rails AntiPatterns: Best Practice Ruby on Rails Refactoring (Addison-Wesley Professional Ruby Series) (Paperback)

This book makes a great companion to Martin Fowler's Refactoring book (or the Ruby version of it by Jay Fields). As someone who's still accumulating the theoretical 10,000 hours of experience it takes to master something (Ruby/Rails), it's nice to have guides like Chad and Tammer there to suggest improvements to my technique. Highly recommended for anyone novice or intermediate Rails developer.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lots of value for an experienced Rails developer, too, February 3, 2011

By 

Adam McCrea - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rails AntiPatterns: Best Practice Ruby on Rails Refactoring (Addison-Wesley Professional Ruby Series) (Paperback)

While the book certainly seems geared toward the novice/intermediate Rails developer, I still loved it even after building Rails apps for several years. The advice was divided for me among three categories - stuff that I already know and do on a regular basis, stuff that I know but *don't* do as often as I should, and practices that were new to me. Admittedly, there isn't a ton of info in the book that falls into the latter category, but it is in there, and it's stuff you won't find in any other book. It would be worth reading even for just those nuggets.

What took me by surprise, though, was how much of the book reinforced concepts I was already partially familiar with but haven't been disciplined enough to practice regularly, and practices that I follow regularly but didn't fully grasp why. This book lays it all out, and with real world examples. Everything I read in the book I can apply to the projects I work on everyday. Whether you're new to Rails or an old hat, this book *will* help you write better Rails applications. Read it, think about it, and apply it.