Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: RIGHT ON "TRACK"
Comment: Are you easily adaptable to change when it comes to your web applications? If you are, this book is for you. Authors Dave Thomas, David Hansson, Leon Breedt, Mike Clark, Thomas Fuchs and Andrea Schwarz, have written an outstanding tutorial and a detailed guide to Rails.
Thomas, Hansson, Breedt, Clark, Fuchs and Schwarz, begin by discussing why Rails imposes some fairly serious constraints on how you structure your web applications; and, how these constraints make it easier to create applications. Next, the authors show you how to install Rails, Windows, OS X, and Linux. Then, you'll get a glimpse of the Rails applications work. The authors continue by showing you how to create simple maintenance pages, link database tables, handle sessions, and create forms. In addition, you'll also learn how to create the web interface that lets you maintain your product information--create new products, edit existing products, delete unwanted ones, and so on. The authors also focus on how to create a simple catalog display. Next, you'll learn how to implement the shopping cart functionality. Then, the authors show you how to implement the checkout function. They continue by showing you how to fulfill orders. In addition, the authors also cover how to access the administrative functions. The authors also show you how to write automated tests for the application you all know and love--the Depot application. Next, they discuss all of the high-level stuff you need to know to understand the rest, like: directory structures, configuration, environments, support classes, and debugging hints. Then the authors look at the basics of Active Record--connecting to databases, mapping tables, and manipulating data. They continue by looking at ActionController and how it works within Rails. The authors also show you how the Action-View module encapsulates all the functionality needed to render templates, most commonly generating HTML or XML back to the user. Next, they discuss the Web, version 2.0. Then, you'll learn all about Action Mailer, which is a simple Rails component that allows your applications to send and receive e-mail. The authors continue by discussing how AWS is structured. In addition, you'll also learn how to secure your Rails application. Finally, the authors examine options that need to be tweaked and the software that needs to be injected as the development setting is replaced by the production setting.
This book isn't a reference manual for Rails. What it is, is an excellent book about how to use Rails modules and most of their methods, either by example or narratively in the text.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: A very good book...I thought it was well presented...
Comment: I thought the book was well written , concise with plenty of examples--especially the part about the css style sheets. I myself will recommend this book to any one who is interested in web development as I have currently used much of their work in my client sites such as:
[...]
Take a look of what I have implemented as it pertains to the book
Customer Rating:
Summary: Awesome way to learn Rails
Comment: Rails is an MVC architecture for building web applications, similar to Struts and Tapestry. So why should you bother learning it? Simply put, because Rails provides a framework that makes it easier to build, deploy and maintain web applications.
Rails describes easier using two concepts from the agile development; Don't Repeat Yourself and Convention Over Configuration.
Adding new functionality using other frameworks inevitably requires making coordinated changes in a number of places. This requires you to spend a little of your focus on the tool instead of your application. With Rails, and the concept of Don't Repeat Yourself, every piece of knowledge is generally found in just one place. This makes web applications a little easier to code and a lot easier to maintain.
Another way Rails makes development easier is by providing usable defaults for almost every piece it provides. This is described as Convention Over Configuration and works remarkably well. Of course if your needs require, the defaults can be easily re-configured.
Rails includes lots of other goodies for the modern, agile developer, including AJAX and web-services support and a built-in testing framework. It's almost as easy to test your application by making web requests to the controller as it is to create unit tests for your classes.
The book is organized around building a working ecommerce website following an iterative approach. Each chapter mimics an iteration by adding new functionality, cleverly introducing new aspects of the MVC framework in a very natural order. I found myself focusing on building the ecommerce web application instead of learning rails. It's rare that I find a technical book so interesting.
It's a basic thing, but I liked the format of the chapters. Each chapter sets the stage with a paragraph introducing the theme of the iteration. Chapter sections focus on a single concept or task. The end of each chapter reviews what was completed. A common enough format, but done very well.
Whether you learn best by reading or by doing, this is a great book for learning Rails. I would recommend this book for anyone interested in quickly building robust web applications, whether for proto-typing or for use in production.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great Introduction, hard for reference
Comment: I enjoyed Dave Thomas' "Programming Ruby" which provided a great tutorial of the Ruby language and and excellent rundown of the language itself, topped off by a useful API reference section.
His "Rails" book is light by comparison. Its a great tutorial, but rather incomplete about the Rails framework in general. I have difficulty using the book as a reference for my particular project and problems. The API is available on-line, but doesn't give the insight for someone still learning Rails.
I wish the book had more information and advice on developing more robust applications, and working with more complex data.
Customer Rating:
Summary: What are you waiting for?
Comment: My programming experience is mostly with mighty PHP. I read some comments about Ruby and Ruby on Rails and got interested. Bought both books. If your field is web development, Ruby on Rails is a must read, mind blowing programming book. You can start with Ruby on Rails and read the whole Ruby later. As a web developer it is your responsibility to learn Ruby on Rails, even if you won't be using it.
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