Rails Cookbook: Recipes for Rapid Web Development with Ruby

I used this book for a grad class project that had to do with building multimedia database system with Ruby on Rails framework. This is the first of the "cookbook" series I ever purchased, so I was a bit skeptical in the beginning. I am very pleased with this book. It has detailed solutions for several of the common problems. I had successfully built a nice multimedia database driven application in a single weekend with this book. Code examples are well presented and it's easy to incorporate it into your application. This is not a beginner's book. If you know nothing about Ruby or Rails, you should get a beginner's book first - I used "Build Your Own Ruby On Rails" by Patrick Lenz [note that this book is available for free download on the web - search for it on Google]. I am very highly pleased with this purchase and I will recommend it highly especially to those who want to get up and running quickly.

I think it's safe to assume the following: 1) Ruby on Rails is hot. 2) Many of us are coming over from other languages (C++, C#, Java) and frameworks (.NET, JEE). 3) You need to start by getting the Ruby pickaxe book ("Programming Ruby") and "Agile Web Development with Rails," both by Dave Thomas. Once you've gone through those two books it is time to face the steep and mysterious RoR learning curve. (Someone else made that statement. I can't remember where I read it, but I like it because it's true.) That's where this book (and its companion "Ruby Cookbook") come in. They contain a ton of succinct, well-written examples. Even if your exact task isn't covered, you can usually find something that's close enough to get you started. And you can usually learn something new by browsing any given example. Let's face it, programming has become so complex that not owning a book like this is not an option.

This is one of the best book about Rails. It is very well written and is easy for a beginner to accomplish the goal of each recipe. There is no fluff in this book, it is to the point and explains everything very clearly. Unlike other heavy weight Rails books, you don't have to read it multiple times to understand the concept. It is very practical so you can learn faster.

This really is not intended to be a tutorial on Rails, but as with all of the O'Reilly cookbooks, it is a collection of solutions to common problems involving Rails. However the recipes in the early chapters are so basic, it in fact, serves two purposes. The early chapters gets the Rails novice up and running, and the later chapters serve up answers to many of the problems that Rails developers of all skill levels have. Therefore, the reader should already be experienced at web development, and be a Rails user of any level of experience including novice. Other frameworks are often designed such that if you can make the leap of understanding their complexities, you can solve many problems. The core developers of the Rails framework differed in their approach and designed a framework that solves simple problems easily and very well. From that juncture, you can easily work up to more difficult problems. The following is the table of contents: Chapter 1. Getting Started - Deals with the basics such as joining the Rails community, finding documentation, and installation. Chapter 2. Rails Development - Recipes on setting up your environment, starting your first Rails applications, and generating Ruby documentation for your application. Chapter 3. Active Record - 22 recipes on "Active Record", which is a persistent storage mechanism for interacting with a relational database. Chapter 4. Action Controller - 16 recipes on "Action Controller", which receives requests and passes them on to a specific action. Chapter 5. Action View - 16 recipes on dealing with the presentation details of your Rails application. Chapter 6. RESTful Development - An odd little chapter of only 6 recipes about breaking down HTTP requests to a natural, human-language type structure where there are verbs and nouns. This chapter has an academic feel to it. Chapter 7. Rails Application Testing - 24 recipes on the subject of testing from the perspective of test driven development. Covers Rake, Rcov, YAML fixtures, and CSV fixtures. Chapter 8. JavaScript and Ajax - 13 recipes on using Javascript and Ajax from within the Rails framework. Shows you how to deal with JavaScript using Ruby code, among other things. Chapter 9. Action Mailer - 6 recipes that show show the three different ways to retrieve email and forward it to the receive method of your mailer class. Chapter 10. Debugging Rails Applications - 12 recipes that include Rails' robust automated testing features and a number of tools that expose bugs in the inner workings of your program. Specifically Firefox extensions, the Javascript shell, and ruby-debug are mentioned, among others. Chapter 11. Security - A short but important chapter of only 5 recipes that include security best practices, SQL injection, and cross-site scripting (XSS). Chapter 12. Performance - 8 recipes dealing with web application performance. Covered topics include measuring, benchmarking, and improving performance as well as dealing with

This is the single most useful Rails reference currently available. It goes far beyond the basics to cover real-world applications, demonstrating both good, practical Rails code, and, where useful, solid general information on web development. If you're like me, after you've gone through the initial rush of the Rails screencasts and the well-written 'Agile Web Development with Rails,' you'll start a project of your own from scratch. There will then come the sheer and mysterious face of the learning cure. For that spot, 'Rails Cookbook' is the book to have.