Practical JRuby on Rails Web 2.0 Projects: Bringing Ruby on Rails to the Java Platform

Have you had any experience with Ruby or Rails? If you have, then this book is definitely for you. Author Ola Bini, has done an outstanding job of writing a book about four technologies: Ruby, Rails, JRuby and Java. Bini, begins by giving you information about the technologies covered, why they should interest you, and an overview of the book. Then, the author shows you how to install everything you need for the rest of the book, including all RubyGems you'll be using. Next, he describes what parts it contains and things that are good to know when doing Rails development. The author also introduces many of the more practical details of Rails in the process. He continues by looking at the databases that JRuby on Rails supports. Then, the author focuses exclusively on the syntax and usage of JRuby's Java integration features. Next, he shows you how create most of the Rails code needed for the CMS application, but stubs out all rendering functionality. The author continues by showing you how to complete the CMS application by adding all the rendering functionality and also taking a look at a few alternative approaches. Then, he shows you how to use JRuby from inside a J2EE Enterprise Bean, implementing the functionality of this bean in Ruby. Next, the author also details deployment options for a JRuby on Rails application, how regular Rails deployment usually works, and how to make the situation much better with JRuby. The author also looks at the options available to consume web services with JRuby, and implements a library to search for books at [...]. He continues by showing you how to create two different libraries for JMS interaction. Finally, the author shows you how to contribute to JRuby or its surrounding projects. This most excellent book can offer you many possibilities if you use JRuby on Rails. It will help you create your first application with JRuby on Rails, and get it into production.

Over the past several months I have spent a lot of time searching the internet for information on JRuby, specifically looking for ways to have Ruby on Rails host Ruby powered applets. I thought I been fairly successful at gathering information until I read this book, and realized how much information I had missed. If you are working on building a production quality application or just want to learn what you can do with the current state of JRuby on Rails, try this book. It will help get you on track right away while avoiding many of the 'gotchas' that come with using Rails on JRuby. You will need to have a good understanding of Ruby, and prior experience with Rails would be very good too. I did encounter a few issues where a few commands listed in the book did not work, but JRuby and Rails being actively under development make problems like that unavoidable. This book would make a good companion for the Pragmatic Programmer's Pickaxe book as well as their Agile Development with Rails book. The projects in this book are definitely more fun than the store in the Agile Rails book. Agile Web Development with Rails, 2nd Edition Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmers' Guide, Second Edition Finally, remember that one of the best ways to support open source projects like JRuby is to buy the book (written by a core developer of the project).