Ruby for Rails: Ruby Techniques for Rails Developers [Paperback]

David Black (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 11, 2006

-The word is out: with "Ruby on Rails" you can build powerful Web applications easily and quickly! And just like the Rails framework itself, Rails applications are Ruby programs. That means you can't tap into the full power of Rails unless you master the Ruby language.

"Ruby for Rails," written by Ruby expert David Black (with a forward by David Heinemeier Hansson), helps Rails developers achieve Ruby mastery. Each chapter deepens your Ruby knowledge and shows you how it connects to Rails. You'll gain confidence working with objects and classes and learn how to leverage Ruby's elegant, expressive syntax for Rails application power. And you'll become a better Rails developer through a deep understanding of the design of Rails itself and how to take advantage of it.

Newcomers to Ruby will find a Rails-oriented Ruby introduction that's easy to read and that includes dynamic programming techniques, an exploration of Ruby objects, classes, and data structures, and many neat examples of Ruby and Rails code in action. "Ruby for Rails": the Ruby guide for Rails developers!

What's Inside Classes, modules, and objects Collection handling and filtering String and regular expression manipulation Exploration of the Rails source code Ruby dynamics Many more programming concepts and techniques!

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

David Black is the author of Falcon's "Ice Climbing Utah" and has published climbing and canyoneering articles in a number of magazines. He's been climbing, canyoneering, and guiding internationally since the mid 1960's. He's an ACA-certified canyoneering guide, and is currently guiding for Maui Canyon Adventures in Kahului, Hawaii. He resides in Wailuku, Maui, Hawaii.

Product Details

• Paperback: 532 pages
• Publisher: Manning Publications (May 11, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1932394699
• ISBN-13: 978-1932394696
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (54 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #726,236 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

David A. Black is a well-known Ruby programmer, trainer, consultant, event organizer, and author. David has been programming in Ruby since 2000, and is currently the director of the Ruby/Rails consultancy Ruby Power and Light, LLC. A founding director of Ruby Central, Inc. and a Ruby standard library contributor, David has written or contributed to a number of popular books about Ruby and Ruby on Rails, including "Ruby for Rails", "The Rails Way", and "Ruby in Practice".

You can contact David via http://www.rubypal.com, the Ruby Power and Light home page.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

94 of 97 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book is phenomenal - you just need to know when to read it., June 21, 2006

By 

Thomas O. Lianza (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ruby for Rails: Ruby Techniques for Rails Developers (Paperback)

I am extremely pleased with this book, and I think it's because I read it at the right point in my studies of Ruby and Rails. I have no Ruby background (Java, mostly) and wanted to pick up Ruby on Rails because of how great it all sounded - sidestepping so many of the problems of JSP/ASP/PHP/etc.

So, the first book I picked up was the PickAxe book, and read it pretty much from start to finish. It turns into a reference about 2/3 in, but the first part of the book is worth a straight-out read. That book gives you everything you need to get up and running with Rails, and has some brief coverage of the Ruby language, semantics, etc - enough to get you by.

Between that book and some Ruby language-related websites, I could build a decently complex web app. I discovered the various helpers from ActionView and got better at building good models with ActiveRecord, and understood the overall flow of the application. I was hooked on Ruby on Rails.

But, if you're like me, you eventually find some of the mystery frustrating. How does inheritence really work? Why do I see modules in some places and classes in others? How do you you make them aware of one another? When I generate a Rails app, what code is it building and where does it go? How come I can use the logger object in my controller, but my helpers can't see it? How does active record know about my database fields?

The mysteries pile up and you eventually need more, but I found the general purpose Ruby book "Programming Ruby" wasn't sticking with me. It covered a ton of topics I didn't care about, and the ones I did care about I didn't realize I was supposed to, because it wasn't obvious how the Ruby in the book related to Rails.

Then I picked up this book - and it was *exactly* what I was looking for. It has answered every question I've listed above, and I'm only halfway through it. I'm finding that I'm actually *understanding* what's going on with Rails under the hood.

Admittedly, if I'd started into this book as a primer for Rails, or a Ruby reference, I probably would have been disappointed. But, that's not what this book is all about. This book has a very important place in the process of one's learning about Ruby and Rails. At this point in my learning, I've found it to be perfect.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Very Repetitive, Slow Read for New Programmers only, June 26, 2006

By 

D. Mitchell (Palo Alto, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Ruby for Rails: Ruby Techniques for Rails Developers (Paperback)

I was really disappointed with this book. It got very good reviews so I bought it without ever looking inside. It says it's written for programmers from many different backgrounds, but it's really for fairly new programmers. The author repeats himself a lot and is incapable of stating things in a concise manner.

I would prefer a book that gets right to the point and highlights what's important or not intuitive. The intro section on MVC is a good example of his repetition. You find yourself thinking you're reading the same sentence several times.

You'll still learn a good amount about Ruby and Rails from this book, but if you've been programming for a while you'll be aggravated by the pace this books introduces the material.

So in short, if you are relatively new to programming, this could be a good book for you. If you are looking for a quick start this may also meet your goal, but it's done in about twice (maybe three times) as many pages as necessary.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great book for Newcomers, September 12, 2006

By 

BrianKremer (Kansas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ruby for Rails: Ruby Techniques for Rails Developers (Paperback)

The book's preface indicated that the author is well versed in Ruby, and that he got into Rails when it was brand new. It sounded like he was in a position to teach the subject matter well, and I really liked his angle: Rails was written in Ruby, and Rails extends Ruby... you really cannot fully utilize Rails without learning Ruby, and this book teaches you all about Ruby, with an eye on Rails. Perfect!

There are four parts to the book. The first part is an introduction which explained how Ruby works, how Rails works, and why it's important for Rails developers to have a good handle on the Ruby programming language. This was more detail than I had gotten in my online reading, and not so much detail that my head blew up immediately. A real plus. Also in the first section, we walked through the beginning of the development process for a simple "music store" web application. This defined a context for the pieces of the Ruby puzzle that were about to be dumped on the table.

The second part of the book really delved into the guts of Ruby programming. It defined objects, variables, classes, instances, constants, modules, methods, inheritance, scope, and control flow techniques. It had been 8 years since I'd done work in Java, and that was my only experience with object oriented programming. Ruby is kind of the same, but not really.

The third part of the book is all about the classes and modules that are built in to Ruby. This is very important stuff, necessary in order to get a feel for what you can do (manipulations and comparisons) with different data types. And there is a lot you can do. This part also describes how arrays, hashes, and regular expressions work in Ruby.

The fourth and final part of this book re-focuses on the music store application from earlier in the book. Once you've gotten a tour of Ruby, you see Rails development in a different light. Controller and model files look different when you have a feel for what you're actually looking at. With your new perspective, the author walks you through several improvements, bringing the online music store closer to reality.

As a kind of a bonus, the final chapter of the book gives some techniques for learning more about Rails (and really, Ruby, too.) This is very good stuff! How do you search through the Rails code to find the section that pertains to your question? How can you more effectively search online documentation? Answers to these kinds of questions can really help a person grow, because once you become an intelligent troubleshooter, the only thing holding you back is your own level of motivation.