Simply Rails 2 (Paperback)

by Patrick Lenz (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Want to learn all about Ruby on Rails 2.0, the web application framework that is inspiring developers around the world?

The second edition of this practical, hands on book will:

• show you how to install Ruby on Rails on Windows, Mac, or Linux
• walk you, step by step, through the development of a Web 2.0 social news application, just like digg.com
• show you how to test, debug, benchmark, and deploy your Rails application

Unlike other Rails books, this book doesn't assume that you are an experienced web developer, or that you've used Ruby before. An entire chapter is devoted to learning Ruby in a fun way, using the interactive Ruby console, so you can follow along at home. You'll be an accomplished Ruby programmer in no time!

The example application that the book builds - a user-generated news web site - is built upon with each following chapter, and concepts such as sessions, cookies and basic AJAX usage are gradually introduced. Different aspects of Rails, such as user authentication, session cookies, and automated testing are explored with each feature that is added to the application.

The book finishes with chapters on debugging, benchmarking and deployment to a live web server.

By the end of the book, you'll have built a fully-featured Web 2.0 application and deployed it to the Web. And all code is up-to-date for Rails 2.0, so you can begin coding immediately with the latest version of Rails.

What Will You Learn?

This book will teach you how to:

• Program with confidence in the Ruby language.
• Build and deploy a complete Rails web application.
• Exploit the new features available in Rails 2.
• Use Rails' Ajax features to create slick interfaces.
• Reap the benefits of a best-practice MVC architecture.
• Work with databases easily using ActiveRecord.
• Implement RESTful development patterns and clean URLs.
• Create a user authentication system.
• Use object oriented concepts like inheritance and polymorphism.
• Build a comprehensive automated testing suite for your application.
• Add plugins to easily enhance your application's functionality.
• Use migrations to manage your database schema without data loss.
• Achieve maximum code reuse with filters and helper functions.
• Debug your application using the ruby_debug client.
• Analyze your application's performance using the Rails logging infrastructure.
• Benchmark your application to determine performance bottlenecks.
• And a whole lot more

About the Author
Patrick Lenz has been developing web applications for 10 years. As well as being the founder and lead developer of the freshmeat.net software portal, his Rails consultancy and application development company, limited overload, was responsible for a major relaunch of eins.de, which is now one of the most popular Ruby on Rails sites in Europe.

Product Details

• Paperback: 450 pages
• Publisher: SitePoint; 2 edition (May 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0980455200
• ISBN-13: 978-0980455205
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #17,989 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hands down leading tutorial book on Rails 2.0, May 29, 2008

By	Scott Gardner "Mac Consultant & Web Developer" (Central IL) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Amongst the plethora of Rails books, only a few cover 2.0+, and even fewer do a decent job of it. This book covers Rails 2.0.2 incrementally from the ground up, and there's even a decent intro to Ruby for those completely new to the language.

Patrick Lenz thoroughly covers the basics, RESTful routing, plugins, testing, etc., and also teaches several tips, tricks, and shortcuts of the trade...things that you may not easily deduce by reading the API. Practically every concept covered is matched with hands-on exercises while developing the book's application. The code is accurate and virtually errata-free.

There were only a couple of times that I had a question. I emailed Patrick, he responded literally within minutes, and was very helpful!

I have read several Rails books. Yet this is only the second book I've read that truly practices what it preaches about testing (and the other was Patrick's first version for Rails 1.2.x: Build Your Own Ruby on Rails Web Applications).

If you want to learn Rails, or already know Rails pre-2.0 and want to get up to speed on the new features and functionality of Rails 2.0+, or finally commit to proper testing, buy this book and take the time to work through and understand every exercise. I think you will be very glad you did.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Beginner Book, July 10, 2008

By	Nemicyst (Castro Valley, CA) - See all my reviews

This book is excellent, if you know nothing of Ruby on Rails, and know very little of other programming languages.

It is a book to introduce you to Rails (and Ruby) without going into too much of the technical aspects.

This will in no way make you proficient at developing Rails applications, however, it introduces you to the fundamentals (especially testing) of rails with which you can go and watch screen screencasts, follow tutorials or read other books on rails with a basic understanding of the process.

I do NOT recommend this book to anyone trying to further along their Rails training (nor is it intended for that).

I DO recommend this for anyone who has picked up a rails book or watched a screencast and blindly started to regurgitate the code that is being taught without understanding what it is supposed to do. This book will explain it.

A (free) tutorial with which I recommend in conjunction with this book is:
[..]
This tutorial goes into gory detail over (nearly) every basic step that you need to know to start your Rails apps.

I have read nearly 10 books , plus countless screencasts and tutorials (mostly outdated due to Rails 2.0) on Rails and Simply Rails 2 is by far the most up-to-date and easy to read for a true beginner.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars very lucid explanation; book has some limitations, August 28, 2008

By	pounding on the keyboard "wantaknow" (Bay area CA USA) - See all my reviews

THis is one of hte best beginner web app books i have ever seen (I've read books on rails, PHP , django, Zope, but not too much on .NET, ASP or java). The author takes the approach that he will introduce one coherent topic at a time thoroughly, with as little source code as possible, without digressions, exceptions or comparisons to other languages (perl, PHP, java). This he does admirably.

If i had to comment on the books limitations, i would say that there are a lot of topics that are glossed over: CSS, regular expressions, security. e.g. page 175, "regexs are confusing". I would've said that regex's are important in rails: validations, generating URL slugs, etc, and there are a lot of good resources, and also verbose mode to make them more readable. The book is pretty well indexed but "regular expressions" doesn't appear in index. p 329, you're shown how to take user input and display back in view *without* sanitizing. This is absolutely something you do not want to show in a beginner rails book. There's no mention of XSS, SQL injection, other security issues in the book, as far as i can tell. Something analogous is on p 258, where plain text passwords are stored to database, along with text that says this is not a great practice. The text should say "If you try to put this code into production, you'll probably be fired".

When you finish reading this carefully, you still won't know enough to look up issues in teh Rails Way book, which is where a aspiring Rails developer needs to be to find work. The book doesn't provide the next steps, e.g. never mentions the most often used rails plugins, ImageMagick, acts as solr/ferret, restful_auth, etc, doesn't mention any browser issues or DBMS issues. (Chap 10 covers acts_as_taggable on steroids pretty thoroughly)

But for somebody who's never done web apps, this book would have a much high comprehension rate than most others (the Dummies rails book was good, but now outdated). So for target demographic, highly recommended.

I would also say that the book's ruby overview is kind of inadequate (rails books either do a handholding ruby in 25 pages chapter, or a detailed view of metaprogramming, gotchas and edge/corner cases). I prefer the latter (as in Ediger "advanced Rails" and Rappin "Professional Rails", both superb books)