O'Reilly Releases Rails Cookbook

With applications that are code-light, feature-full, and built to scale quickly, Rails has revolutionized web development. Not only has it been adopted with impressive speed and enthusiasm, but the vitality of the Rails user community also promises that Rails adoption will continue at an accelerated pace as the framework matures. For web developers looking to be productive with Rails quickly, the new Rails Cookbook by Rob Orsini, provides recipes that address the everyday, real-world challenges they'll face on the path to proficiency.

In preparation for writing the book, Orsini explains that he researched the question of what the Rails community needed most in a cookbook: "I collected data from the Rails mailing lists as well as from the most active IRC channels," he recalls. "I wasn't very scientific about how I processed the data, but I did get a feel for what were many of the most commonly asked questions." Based on this, Orsini created the initial outline of the book and ran it past as many Rails users as he could for feedback.

"While I hope that the book has something to offer Rails developers at all experience levels," says Orsini, "I think it will best serve those with web development experience, but who are new to Rails. That said, the book includes a wide variety of topics ranging from basic to advanced."

Each recipe in the Rails Cookbook includes a solution to a problem, with a discussion of how and why it works, so developers can adapt the techniques to their specific situations. "Rails has been a fast-moving target," says Orsini. "I took care to make sure the book covers the new features of Rails 1.2 within the body of recipes. To make the transition to Rails 1.2 easier, the book includes an appendix detailing the changes from the previous stable version of Rails (1.1.6)."

Rails Cookbook is also available in PDF beginning Feb. 5, 2007. Topics in the book include:

• modeling data with the ActiveRecord library
  
• setting up views with ActionView and RHTML templates
  
• building an application's logic into ActionController
  
• testing and debugging a Rails application
  
• building responsive web applications using JavaScript and Ajax
  
• ensuring applications are secure and perform well
  
• deploying applications with Mongrel and Apache
  
• using Capistrano to automate deployment

"Rails developers have their work cut out for them in terns of staying on top of the ever-changing set of technologies that make up Rails development," notes Orsini. "I think this book includes a lot of the investigative legwork. While the blogosphere has an amazing wealth of information on Rails, it still takes time to go through and verify. This book has done much of that work and more, so developers don't have to."

Rob Orsini is an open source developer living in northern California. He's currently working for O'Reilly Media, in their production software group. Previously, Rob was the webmaster at Industrial Light & Magic, where he developed applications in support of the special effects industry. Rob has been programming the web since 1998.

Related links: (Open in a new window.)
oreilly.com/catalog/9780596527310/

View printable version (opens in new window)
Back