Product Description

Ruby on Rails is fast displacing PHP, ASP, and J2EE as the development framework of choice for discriminating programmers, thanks to its elegant design and emphasis on practical results. RailsSpace teaches you to build large-scale projects with Rails by developing a real-world application: a social networking website like MySpace, Facebook, or Friendster.

Inside, the authors walk you step by step from the creation of the site's virtually static front page, through user registration and authentication, and into a highly dynamic site, complete with user profiles, image upload, email, blogs, full-text and geographical search, and a friendship request system. In the process, you learn how Rails helps you control code complexity with the model-view-controller (MVC) architecture, abstraction layers, automated testing, and code refactoring, allowing you to scale up to a large project even with a small number of developers.

This essential introduction to Rails provides

• A tutorial approach that allows you to experience Rails as it is actually used
• A solid foundation for creating any login-based website in Rails
• Coverage of newer and more advanced Rails features, such as form generators, REST, and Ajax (including RJS)
• A thorough and integrated introduction to automated testing

The book's companion website provides the application source code, a blog with follow-up articles, narrated screencasts, and a working version of the RailSpace social network.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #192495 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 537 pages

About the Author

Michael Hartl is a programmer and entrepreneur. Before discovering Rails, he used Zope/Python in a startup he cofounded to produce fantasy sports websites, including BracketManager, at the time the number one independent NCAA Basketball Tournament website. Previously, he was a physics instructor at the California Institute of Technology, where he received the Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Teaching. He also served as Caltech's editor for The Feynman Lectures on Physics: The Definitive and Extended Edition (Addison-Wesley). He is a graduate of Harvard College and has a Ph.D. in physics from Caltech.

Aurelius Prochazka is a pioneer of interactive, user-driven websites and has founded several companies, including Creative Internet Design, Inc., and ArsDigita Corporation. After working extensively with many operating systems and web frameworks, he happily calls Macintosh OS X and Ruby on Rails his preferred programming environments. Aurelius is the principal developer of Caltech's main website, as well as its admissions and alumni sites. He is a graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and has a Ph.D. in computational fluid dynamics from Caltech.

Customer Reviews

Great Intro to Ruby on Rails
If you're thinking about getting this then stop now and just do it. It's a great introduction to RoR that is fun and practical.

Simply put, you construct a really simple social network with the book. I'm only half finished with it, but the stuff I've learned will be invaluable on other projects. The author sprinkles in some humor the whole way along.

One of the really great things is the testing and refactoring of code. They show you how to do something quickly and then they also take the time to go back and clean up code and do things more efficiently, while maintaining integrity through RoR's testing.

It's awesome, and I've already purchased another copy to give away as a gift.

Mediocre for an experienced coder
I found this book frustrating. About 70 pages into the the tutorial I realized I was monkey-typing and had no real idea what was going on -- things were happening, but I didn't understand *why*. I abandoned the book for another in the same series (The Rails Way (Addison-Wesley Professional Ruby Series). That book is easily twice as long and does nothing but introduce Rails, and although it was a hard slog to read I found it a much, much better introduction to the technology -- and possibly more importantly for Rails, the conceptual framework needed to use it.

At the end of the day, you want to walk away from an introductory book with a real understanding of the topic. I believe this book's dual focus (social networking + Rails intro) distracted the authors from clearly introducing Rails. This may be a useful introduction for a novice software developer, but if you want to really understand what Rails is doing and prepare yourself for doing real development, I cannot recommend it.

Doesn't work with Rails 2.0
Buy this book at your own risk. It doesn't work with Rails 2.0 and even the author's updates (on the website) that supposedly makes it Rails 2.0 compatible doesn't work. I have yet to make it past page 19 even after doing the author's updates.