Rails Recipes (Pragmatic Programmers) [Paperback]

Chad Fowler (Author)

Book Description

Series: Pragmatic Programmers | Publication Date: June 16, 2006

Rails is large, powerful, and new. How do you use it effectively? How do you harness the power? And, most important, how do you get high quality, real-world applications written?

From the latest Ajax effects to time-saving automation tips for your development process, Rails Recipes will show you how the experts have already solved the problems you have.

• Use generators to automate repetitive coding tasks.
• Create sophisticated role-based authentication schemes.
• Add live search and live preview to your site.
• Run tests when anyone checks code in.
• How to create tagged data the right way.
• and many, many more...

Owning Rails Recipes is like having the best Rails programmers sitting next to you while you code.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Chad Fowler is an internationally known software developer, trainer, manager, speaker, and musician. Over the past decade he has worked with some of the world's largest companies and most admired software developers.

Chad is VP of Engineering at LivingSocial. He is co-organizer of RubyConf and RailsConf and author or co-author of a number of popular software books, including The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development.

Product Details

• Paperback: 344 pages
• Publisher: Pragmatic Bookshelf; 1 edition (June 16, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0977616606
• ISBN-13: 978-0977616602
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #756,432 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Chad Fowler is an internationally known software developer, trainer, manager, speaker, and musician. Over the past decade he has worked with some of the world's largest companies and most admired software developers.

Chad is VP of Engineering at LivingSocial. He is co-organizer of RubyConf and RailsConf and author or co-author of a number of popular software books, including The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Too outdated for Rails 2.x, January 31, 2009

By 

Reuben Sivan (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Rails Recipes (Pragmatic Programmers) (Paperback)

The basics are great - if you were back in 2007 or so.
Now in late 2008 and early 2009 the book is too obsolete. Most examples, starting almost from the first page, will not run under Rails 2.x, as the book was written with Rails 1.x in mind.
Rails is a fast advancing technology, which makes some books quickly become obsolete. This is one of them.
In short don't waste your money, and try instead something like Advanced Rails Recipes, which I just purchased, and which was written specifically for Rails 2.x

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A top-notch title, but /please/ give us more testing recipes!, July 4, 2006

By 

J. B. Rainsberger (Toronto, ON Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Rails Recipes (Pragmatic Programmers) (Paperback)

I am a novice Rails programmer, that much is certain. As a result, I'm quite happy to have Chad Fowler's "Rails Recipes" by my side. I have been part of the beta program for this book, so I've been reading it in parts for the past few months. It has been impressive, to say the least. As an author of my own "recipes" book, I am interested to see other authors' version of the recipe format, just in case I am able to incorporate something they do into a future book of my own. While Rails Recipes hasn't taught me much about writing a recipes book, it has taught me an awful lot of great things about Rails.

I look forward to using Chad's recipes in my current projects. I already have a couple of ideas, including prettying up my URLs and creating a custom form builder. If I had one criticism, it's the relative paucity of testing recipes. Writing Rails applications test-first is still a struggle for me, and I know there are those from whom I can learn. I would like the opportunity. (How many of you would like to come to Toronto to teach me?) I suppose I'll have to write a few testing recipes of my own.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 70+ Rails Tidbits In One Book!!, January 29, 2007

By 

Daniel McKinnon "Dan" (Tewksbury, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Rails Recipes (Pragmatic Programmers) (Paperback)

'Rails Recipes' by Chad Fowler is a wonderful book filled with 70 recipes which will automatically improve your Rails skillset and no doubt get you programming faster and better than ever before!!

Pragmatic is never going to win any awards for layout of their books, but the content within more than makes up for the drab interior. I can't list out all 70 tidbits here but I will give the breakdown of chapters:

User Interface Recipes (13)

Database Recipes (17)

Controller Recipes (10)

Testing Recipes (4)

Big-Picture Recipes (22)

Email Recipes (4)

If you use Ruby on Rails and want to be able to accomplish common tasks without rewriting code that already exists, you owe it to yourself to pick up this book and improve your efficiency the moment you turn the front cover over. Wonderful book, great size, solid writing make this an EASY recommendation.

***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED