Customer Reviews

Ruby on Rails: Up and Running

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This is indeed a fast-paced book designed for experienced developers. Using it, I was able to build the Photo Share project it covers rather quickly. I got a good overview of how Rails works, too.

But while I appreciate the end result, I wasn't always so sure what I did or why I did it. The introduction of concepts is *so* fast and terse that I found it hard to connect concepts to practice. The section on Rails Strengths, on pp. 2-3, could certainly have been stronger on this point. Still, the points the authors wanted to make about the power of the Rails environment was unmistakable.

I disagree with the premise of the book about its intended audience. Web-oriented programmers are certainly ideal for this book; other programmers are going to struggle. A great deal of conceptual background is taken for granted. Because Rails make so many understood connections between components, it's worth a few more pictures and diagrams to illustrate those relationships. The many diagrams on data table structure were not as helpful to me.

There are errata that can be quite annoying if you are following along carefully. Mis-stated filenames crop up now and then. In a few cases I followed the book exactly and lost a bit of functionality. The book does not advise on error paths or what to do when something goes wrong, so if you're not making file backups or otherwise tracking your changes, you'll go down a rat-hole or two.

On the whole, the book has a feel of being a bit rushed and breathless, rather than merely short in form. This means going over the material several times. Often I found a key piece of information buried in a paragraph when a bullet point would have made it easier to spot. I know people are bullet-shy these days, but when you're writing real information as opposed to concepts, listing it out is helpful.

My review copy came free, so I can't complain about price. That said, I wouldn't buy this book at the price it wants.

Given that this book is only 127 pages long without the Appendix, it's a pretty pricey little item. I liked the content of the book, and certainly learned a lot about how to bring up a Rails application, but a $29.99 retail price seems exorbitant.

In this first edition there are also plenty of typos and some errors in the example code (VERY frustrating). Luckily the corrected source code can be downloaded from O'Reilly free.

I would have given this item 4 or 5 stars if it would have been half the price. Alternatively, this little book would make a great introduction to a more comprehensive book on Rails. Stand-alone, it feels like a rip-off.

I love books like this -- get in, get out, get on with it. I'm incredibly busy these days. (Who isn't?) Gone are the days where I can afford to hunker down with a 1,000 page tome, and quite frankly I just don't want to anymore. I place real value in brevity in computer books. This isn't Shakespeare. This is business. Let's get on with it.

Maybe I'm biased; Ruby on Rails: Up and Running takes the same approach that my co-author and I took with JBoss At Work. Rather than a series of disjointed "Hello World" examples, Up and Running starts with a simple application and builds it iteratively through the end of the book. Seeing the application in action, coming to life one chapter at a time, is both rewarding and educational. My copy is dog-eared from repeating the same steps, in order, for the next several applications that I got "up and running" on my own.

If you're looking for an exhaustive reference guide, this isn't the right book. (Agile Web Development with Rails, by Dave Thomas and David Heinemeier Hansson might be a better fit.) Up and Running is more like an afternoon pair-programming session with a couple of really sharp guys. The back cover copy says it all: "...a quick, no-nonsense introduction that shows you how to build real applications."

I'm in two minds about this book, but one thing I know for sure; I wish that this book was around when I started off on my Rails journey, minus the mistakes and the bad representation though!

Bruce and Curt take you from a very fast paced intro to a fairly complete and professional photo sharing application. Personally I will go back to this application when I want to experiment with Rails/Ruby.

They describe the Active record, the corner stone of Rails, adequately and after working through chapters 2 and 3 you should have a fair grasp of the how rails implements the active record pattern. I especially liked their use of the ruby console to show the reader how certain things work. I personally feel that too few Rails programmers use the power of the console to experiment with Ruby, remember you learn by experimentation.

They then go ahead and show how you can build a quick and dirty interface with the "controversial" scaffolding around the database you created in chapters 2 and 3. This where Rails shines for me; as scaffolding allows you to get something up and running fast. Their coverage of this subject is more than adequate.

In chapter 5 Bruce and Curt take the rough-and-dirty generated Rails application and turn into a pretty professional looking application using style sheets. Nothing new here but it shows you where and how you do it under/in Rails.

Chapter 6 uses the power of Ajax to add the icing on the cake for the photo application. A great intro as to how Ajax is implemented/used under Rails.

Chapter 7 describes the automated testing functionality in Rails and this for me was the chapter I benefited the most from. I'm a mainframe programmer that has taken up Rails, and Ruby with it, as a hobby and this automated testing is foreign to me. So this book has shown me how to test the right way in/under Rails.

The book ends with a summary and pointers to where more information can be found. Basically the appendix is one large cheat sheet of Rails that can come in handy as your Rails knowledge grows.

Personally I think that the books formatting SHOULD be improved, for instance it should be made much clearer to the reader when he has to do something and boy the reviewers, editor(s), whoever deserves the blame, must be shot for allowing so many typos to slip through.

In the beginning I said I was in two minds about this book, basically this is because I'm not sure if I should recommend this book.

On the one side I feel this book is worth purchasing. I really do feel, even with the typos and faults, that with hard work and care you will learn what Rails is all about and that this book will give you a solid foundation to get you started on your Rails, and Ruby, journey.

On the other side I feel that as a paying customer you deserve better, there is nothing more frustrating than learning something new and the tutorial you use to learn it is full of mistakes.

Although the book is overpriced, the value I have gotten from it makes it worthwhile. Like others, I did not pay list for it.

I had previously purchased the Pragmatic Programmers book on Rails. The book was too big. I doubt that I ever opened it. This book is thin and simple.

In each chapter I make a list of the action items, things that I am expected to do. I also make a list of results that I am expected to see. I check them off as I do them.

The result is that for the first time I am doing a little RoR. It gets me started. I agree that there are filename typos. For instance, in the first chapter the controllers directory is called the controller directory.

I don't agree with the person who says that this book is not for people who read it in front of a computer while they have internet access. That is exactly who it is for. I do read the chapter first to see what I have to do, but then I go over it again in front of the computer.

All in all, I am well-pleased with this book, because it got me off of my duff and into RoR.

By the way, the section on installing RoR is peculiar. They tell you in the first chapter to install RoR using Gems. I did that and it worked like a charm. One command, basically.

But in the Appendix on installing Rails it says that there is no simple way to install RoR on Unix. In fact, Gems was as simple as can be.

It is probably true, sadly, that the book is rushed. But judged by its value to me I rate it quite highly. Other than typos I don't know if spending more time on the book would have made it any better.

In this book, the authors walk you through the creation of a simple Photo Share project that has a simple enough structure that a Rails beginner will be able to quickly understand what's going on. The authors don't try to cover each new feature. Instead, they show you the ones they see as the backbone, forming the most important elements to understand. They also cover migrations and Ajax in some detail, because you won't find too much information on those two frameworks in other books yet. This book was written for experienced developers who are new to Rails and possibly to Ruby. To use this book, you don't have to be a strong Ruby programmer, but you should already be a programmer. The following is the table of contents:

Chapter 1. Zero to Sixty: Introducing Rails - You create a Rails project. You also created a controller and invoke it from a browser. Then, you create a view and learn how views can interact with controllers and with the Ruby language.

Chapter 2. Active Record Basics - You create a database schema and let Rails use the schema to generate your model. Then you use a Rails framework to help manage relationships between the different parts of the application.

Chapter 3. Active Record Relationships - You look at managing relationships between Active Record classes. You'll see most types of Active Record relationships in action by adding functions to your application.

Chapter 4. Scaffolding - The next step is to use scaffolding to build primitive web user interfaces for these classes. Scaffolding will take you a good ways down the road, but it won't generate a completed application.

Chapter 5. Extending Views - Scaffolding doesn't manage relationships, so you can't see or edit the photos associated with a category or the slides in a slideshow. The views are also ugly and incomplete. In this chapter you use the generated scaffolding as a base and build a more complete user interface.

Chapter 6. Ajax - Here you learn how Ajax techniques can reclaim some of the fluidity and responsiveness that has been lost to web applications via the Photo Share project.

Chapter 7. Testing - You'll create a well-tested application by using Rails to actively generate default test cases and setting up scripts and tools to run three different kinds of tests.

Appendix A. Installing Rails
Appendix B. Quick Reference

As you can see, this is not a reference book. It simply gets you to understand the process of using Rails via a rather simple application. You'll definitely need other books to get further into Rails, but this is a great first book on the subject.

There are likely to be any number of reviews on this book mentioning these two points:
1) The book appears small.
2) The content is fast paced.

Ditto on both counts.

The book is designed to give you the fastest introduction to Ruby on Rails, and it does that by presenting the instructions required and the purpose, but is light on the reasons why and what to do if things go wrong. It also omits the common sections such as environment setup and editing files. While this doesn't always cause huge problems it does require some experience in the user.

The lessons in "Ruby on Rails: Up and Running" are arranged as a series of improvement on a photo display project, where each project builds on the concepts required to build a web application. The good part is that each presents a working solution, but is of lesser use when your requirements don't match exactly and the code is not explained completely.

The book is great, as far as it goes, but it would have been better if the time had been taken to expand the concepts and given complete coverage. This way it gets you started faster as long as everything goes without a hitch, but will take you longer if you get something wrong or don't quite understand. It also makes it possible target audience smaller due to the assumptions on prior knowledge.

This has been said already, but I'll add my "me too": In a nutshell, this book will tell you what Rails is capable of, but not really how to do it.

This is a great book, and I recommend you consider it, but for a couple reasons you might not want to buy it.

First, it's a great *short* overview of the process of developing Ruby on Rails apps. I found that I understand all the things I've read elsewhere but it's sometimes hard to put it all together and remember all the steps in a logical sequence. Because of the magic of Rails (and its use of metaprogramming and code generation and other <del>groovy</del>amazing stuff, you have to learn to THINK DIFFERENTly about development. While you're in the process of making the mental shift, both conceptually and syntactically, it's good to have cheatsheets to simply REMEMBER what works, and which magical incantation does which thing. There are plenty of cheatsheets for Rails and Ruby, but none that I've seen that are like this: all the basics, in sequence, with clear explanation.

Think of it as a stepping stone between DHH's screencast and his Agile Web Develpment with Rails (written mostly by Dave Thomas), which is a little on the long side for a first book. (It's much better to get a firmer grasp of the big picture before focusing in on details. Sorry about the mixed metaphor.)

However, you should note that it is now quite old and in need of updating. It is also frustratingly full of errors: spelling, grammatical, factual, and technical. So be forewarned. If you can put up with all that, however, it's very useful, and clearly written. O'Reilly just needs to fire all their proofreaders.

This book is a really nice book if you only want a cursory overview at a quick pace and have another, better reference. The photo sharing example is not very helpful to me, I don't share photos. I write websites with forms for businesses that uses a db back end and lot's of web services. The db part of rails is the only part of rails covered, not much on creating web forms, not much on deployment, nothing on web services, not enough on rails AJAX integration, generally not enough of anything. I did buy this book thinking I would get a better value of it than I did, but it is definitely overpriced. If you decide to purchase this book, get a used one in good condition - the price will be more appropriate.

To get the best use out of this book, buy or have handy a more in-depth companion book. Also note, a lot of the book has become deprecated by newer versions of rails, so it is a bit out of date.