The Rails Way and Advanced Rails Recipes
Posted by David January 29, 2008 @ 05:51 PM
The flow of new Rails books seems unstoppable these days and it’s hard to keep up with all of the new releases. But there are two books that I’ve recently have had a chance to taste that I’d like to highlight.
The first is The Rails Way by Obie Fernandez, which I wrote the foreword for. It’s a big whooper of a book (900+ pages!), but also a very comprehensive walk-through for the Rails developer who already has his feet wet. It also includes a good dose of community commentary on the how’s and why’s, which I rather like.
The second is Mike Clark’s Advanced Rails Recipes, which is still not finished, but there’s a beta book available. It takes up from Chad Fowler’s original Rails Recipes book and gives you another 72 how-tos on more in-depth topics, such as REST, deployment, and testing. I’ve had a chance to taste a few of the recipes already and it’s good stuff.
If there’s a new Rails book that you really like, write a note in the comments and point people to it.
For folks with a PHP background, Pragmatic’s new “Rails for PHP Developers” book is a great way to get started.
There’s also a support site for the book, http://railsforphp.com, that has regular articles about learning Rails from a PHP perspective.
I recently purchased “The Rails Way” and I have really been blown away by it’s completeness and readability. I originally purchased it as a reference, but I’m very close to being finished reading it cover-to-cover.
It is exactly what I needed after reading Agile and building a few small sites.
Thank you to Obie and all in the Rails community that contributed to this book.
+1 to Obie and “The Rails Way”. I’ve been following its writing as a O’Reilly’s rough cut and it surely required an enormous effort.
The final result is impressive: a must for every developer after some introductory book. Very useful for learning some advanced or tricky features as well as a day-to-day reference.
‘Agile…’ is a nice start, but now Rails has a Bible, thanks Obie!
I too “got my feet wet” with the second edition the Agile book and I just recently purchased “The Rails Way.” I would venture to say that if there exists a “Rails Bible,” this may be it.
It is magnificent not only because of its brevity and completeness, but also because it covers Rails 2.0, which I believe is the first book to do so. Five stars, highly recommended, etc.
Cody Fauser just finished a PeepCode PDF book on ActiveMerchant. The examples use Rails 2 features and will get you up and running with accepting credit card payments with your Rails application.
http://peepcode.com/products/activemerchant-pdf
I’ve spent a couple hundred dollars on Rails books and I think that Obie’s is indeed the cream of the crop. Also, there is a great beginner’s book from Wrox by Steve Holzner…
Rails is great and all, but I’m starting to feel the pinch of having to buy so many books. Is this part of the painless development process?
What I really like about other open source web frameworks is their free books, if you know what I mean ;) Dive into Python is also free from the author.
@vinny77: Well, you really don’t need to buy all (or any) books about Rails to develop with it.
The Rails Way and Advanced Rails Recipes are great books. Also, I really like to have some Ruby-specific references: The Ruby Way and Design Patterns in Ruby.
@vinny77: Is that a joke? The Wrox Rails book is the most foul description of what Rails is I’ve ever seen comitted to paper. The guy just totally steals a PHP/Java book and merges it together.
The dude has written over 100 books. That’s not a typo… 100 books. Can you be an expert in 100 topics? Shit, I have trouble learning just enough languages to truly be good at any of them.
And he didn’t learn squat. That book is filled with terrible non-Rubyesque examples.
Its poop.
This seems like a very nice new book about integrating Rails 2 with Flex 3
http://flexiblerails.com/
Checkout this: Advanced Rails by Brad Ediger from O’Reilly. That’s cool’s book.
@ Hampton Catlin – Actually it wasn’t a joke, but perhaps you are right. I was my introductory text – the recommendation of a prof at UCSD – and I felt it was quick and dirty and prepared me well for the Agile_Rails and Ruby for Rails. Maybe I was redeemed by the latter books…
Rails for PHP Developers will be nice
I really recommend this book.
Is about Rails 2.0, right?