Customer Reviews

Rapid Web Applications with TurboGears: Using Python to Create Ajax-Powered Sites

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I bought this book because I inherited a Turbogears-created website at work, and it seemed like a decent framework. The framework itself is still clearly having growing pains (it was REALLY tricky to get the right combination of versions-of-packages to get the website running on another platform), but the framework itself is NOT the subject of this review - the book is.

The first thing I've noticed is that the editors were apparently asleep. There are TONS of typos, and I haven't even progressed past the first third of the book in terms of doing the tutorials. I don't recommend anyone try to use this book to LEARN anything about how it all fits together - the code was obviously never actually run in some circumstances (clear typos in the code caused me to have to edit the examples given - the "Bookmarker" example in Chapter 4 is a perfect example of this.) Short shrift is also given to anyone who's not intimately familiar with large python projects - I understand that this is not intended to be a python tutorial, but better explanation of flow-of-control is warranted in a lot of cases.

I suppose the more advanced topics might be more useful - given the amount of trouble I'm having with the introductory material, though, I may never find out. I don't recommend this book to anyone who's trying to set up turbogears for the first time - I struggled mightily with a few Python-related issues, and the book was no help at all. I'm also REALLY disappointed that the majority of other reviewers of this book are people with a financial interest in it. This, alone, should be a big tipoff.

I will probably wind up getting decent use out of the book - my work project isn't going away soon, and TurboGears as a framework seems decent. But I'm certainly glad I paid less than $25 for it (from a seller I assume must have had a used copy, though it was sold as "new"), and I don't recommend anyone else pay more.

Disappointing.

For what it's worth, I participated in the proofreading process and I still purchased the print version.

I happen to believe that Python will be the next programming language of choice for mainstream IT, and TurboGears makes it easier to build maintainable, cleanly architected web applications using Python. This book will be a foundation element of the growing TurboGears ecosystem, as it nicely complements the online documentation for TurboGears and the various frameworks that TG builds atop.

The authors have a very casual narrative style to their writing, which greatly aids the overall readability of the book. It's almost as if you're reading the transcript of a top-notch training session. The base text is accompanied by a number of diagrams, tables, example snippets, annotations, sidebars, and screenshots. If you like to skim through your books, you'll feel right at home with this one.

The books covers the entire vertical application stack from JavaScript down to basic Sqlite database installation and setup, and the entire application creation lifecycle from installing TurboGears to production deployment.

I think that there is a second unintended audience for this book, namely those developers interested in building Ajax apps using MochiKit, even if they aren't using TurboGears (or Python) for their backend server development. MochiKit is the brilliant and highly acclaimed JavaScript framework created by Bob Ippolito that "makes JavaScript suck less".

MochiKit is featured as a core element of the TurboGears application stack, and this book features more than 80 pages dedicated to MochiKit.

In closing, the authors did a great job on this book. I highly recommend it.

--Mike

I was somewhat disappointed with this book, although I still found it to be useful for learning TurboGears. I won't mince words: the editing sucks. If you can get through the typos, though, you'll learn a fair amount and be better positioned to do something useful with TurboGears after you've read the book. Treat the book more as a tutorial than a reference.

This book is terrible. The examples are incomplete and filled with typos. You will NOT learn Turbogears from this book, just how to be frustrated.

I'm working on a Turbogears app. I find it a good framework. The book, however, is frustrating to work with. I rarely have time to read computer books sequentially. I generally jump around trying to find answers to my questions. I'm not finding answers... just partial examples throughout.

For example, I would expect an AJAX example to have all the pieces necessary to implement an AJAX conversation with the file names clearly labeled. I would expect a diagram of how the pieces interact. What I find is little snippets of code without context and no diagrams anywhere in the book.

I think the authors did a reasonable job of explaining Turbogears from their perspective. It was the editors' job to push them to explain things from their audience's perspective. This has the look of a rush job.

Please do us all a favor and boycot any book that relies on sample code to understand and learn how to use and doesn't bother to test the sample code. Most of the examples in the book do not work and you can expect to spend a great deal of time figuring out where the errors are. As a bare minimum a web site with downloadable corrected code should be provided. If all of the mistakes in the code were corrected I would strongly recommend the book.

The information in this book is completely out of date only a few months after it came out. Turbogears 2.0 is going to basically replace every component of TG 1.0. So I would not recommend buying this book unless you want to re-learn everything again when the Turbogears 1.0 codebase is abandoned (it largely already has been as developers move to 2.0 or other frameworks).

Turbogears is a good example of what happens when PR outruns project maturity, and fundamental decisions are abandoned late in a development cycle.

I ordered this book immediately after "discovering" TurboGears. It is full of useful information, but the editing and organization leave a lot to be desired.

It is VERY IMPORTANT to be familiar with Python, because a lot of the programming examples contain mistakes. Many of the issues look like search-and-replace problems, because half of the examples in a chapter might refer to a class named one thing, and the others might refer to a different name that is obviously the same thing if you are paying attention.

Given that online documentation for TurboGears also seems somewhat disorganized and scattered, I'll be using this book as reference information while working on my first TG-based site.

Since the book provides a ton of information about a broad range of topics (TurboGears is, after-all, a conglomeration of a bunch of separate technologies), I'm overlooking the editing errors and giving it a 4 out of 5.

This book gave me the overall introduction I needed before diving into my first TurboGears project. Without this book, I would have had trouble seeing the "big picture" and how all the pieces fit together. I would definitely recommend it to those who are new to web development.

Most of this book is great, but a few of these chapters are quite out of order. The "reference section" chapters that are written by Gigi Sayfan are absolutely excellent and a joy to read (chapters 10 - 22). The guided tour of the "WhatWhat Status" code in chapters 6 - 9 are not very organized, and they did nothing but confuse me until AFTER I had read chapters 10 - 22. Chapters 1 - 5 provide "first steps" instructions, and are well-written.

After reading this book, I am convinced that TurboGears is in fact the best web framework available today. However, the skills and libraries that you learn in this book are not only applicable to TurboGears, but ANY web development system because TurboGears is a combination of the best open-source tools available. You can apply SqlObject, MochiKit, and CherryPy in almost any web development framework, and so even if you do not end up using TurboGears, the time spent reading this book will still be a good investment of your time.

~Christopher Sebastian

I just bought the book, but I have read several chapters already and I can't wait the book to arrive to read the rest.
Turbogears is, IMHO, one of the best frameworks around, and the best python based. If you like python Turbogears is the right framework for you, if you don't know python give it a try.
With "Rapid Web Applications with TurboGears" you will go from 0 to 100 in no time, and at the same time you will support the project.