Agile Web Development with Rails, 2nd Edition

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61 Reviews

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It does not reflect the current state of Rails at this time. A new version is supposed to come out in October 2008 that covers 2.0. If you get this version you will need to switch to an older version of Rails, otherwise you'll only get about 68 pages in before the examples stop working.

As a web developer, I own literally hundreds of technical books - most of are either thick tomes full of encyclopedic information you'll never use in real life. This book is perfect for learning rails. You jump right in and develop an application - getting a taste for what you'd be doing in real life right away. Datailed explanations are left for later, when you better understand how the platform actually works.

The example application you'll develop, if you follow the book as you should, is a real-world shopping cart type app. Along the way you'll pick up some agile development.

I would not recommend this book to absolute beginners to web development - you should understand some basic web development. This book takes you through everything from installing rails and MySQL to deployment.

I have purposely refrained from posting a review of this book though I had purchased the First Edition of this book back in October 2006 when I was getting started with RoR. I have gone through it and purchased the Second Edition and am going through it now.
The first time around, my knowledge and experience with RoR was quite limited especially the Ruby knowledge. It became clear to me that I needed to learn more Ruby before I could begin to grasp what the first edition of this book was all about. I went back and bought David Black's Ruby for Rails Developers book and went through it entirely working through the whole code base. I had to repeat certain chapters a few times to really understand what was going on. Since then, I have gone through Patrick Lenz's "Build Your Own Ruby on Rails.." book and have now come back to the Second Edition of the Book and working through the Depot application again. This time around though, my appreciation for the material in this book has gone up since I am better able to grasp it. I may have to repeat certain Chapters/Sections a few times to round out my knowledge but that is OK.
My advise to people getting started with Ruby and Ruby on Rails is that do not make this your first RoR book (I would say the same thing about the PickAxe or Programming Ruby book). Instead, buy some of the starters books, e.g., the ones that I mention above, and go through them first. If you do that, you will be in a much better position to learn effectively from this book. This book tries to get you running too soon too fast. You have to walk before you run.
Other than that, the materical in the book is obviously written by people who have an expert level understanding of the product and they know how to communicate it well.

I am an oldster (you know, 40+) and have learned many a language. Kernigan and Ritchie wrote their "K & R" C-language book in some written language a little higher level than English. After 40 or 50 reads through, I got it. I read C++ books, SmallTalk, Delphi, Visual Basic, and many Java books, HTML, JavaScript, CSS, Awk, Emacs, REXX (!!), and just about everything O'Reily has ever published.

Now, I come to Ruby, and Ruby on Rails. Thank goodness for this book. What a relief to read a book that is 1) comprehensive, 2) practical, 3) accurate, 4) funny at times, and 5) above all, has a good index! Perhaps programming languages are (finally) getting easier to write about, but Dave Thomas is an outstanding technical writer: he knows his audience and writes for us. Look, I know a million programming languages, but I am not the kind of person who zips through a book and suddenly gets it. Most books are written by people who are experts in the nuances, but have forgotten the many steps that lead up to those nuances.

AWDWR is better. It starts with a non-trivial and complete tutorial -- the first half of the book is an application that manages to hit most of the critical aspects of actually doing the job. It is a reasonably broad application covering many points of real webapps. (I read through thinking, yeah, we managed to deal with that in our Java webapp in a month, and here it is, built in to Rails, and better ... more than once). Maybe it is Rails, which seems to be a significant step in maturity over current generations (my last was WebWork/Struts 2, which seems to be the best you can do with Java these days, but really only one part of the larger problem).

But I have to give great respect to Dave Thomas and the other great writers who all made this second edition book a great, great book. I could follow along when reading, I actually did the whole tutorial and found myself learning almost all the way through typing the examples in by hand (mostly by learning how to debug my typos and understanding how the language and framework responded). Now that we're writing our real software, we still look back at the tutorial to get a clear view of how all the parts fit together.

The second part of the book is a solid documentation of the components and APIs available. It is not complete, but nor should it be -- if you want the API, link to the Rails site API. It does cover the important points, however, and ties them back to the tutorial where appropriate. Various important aspects are covered in enough detail to get the idea across, but not so much as to be just a lexicon.

I can't recommend this book highly enough. If this is your first programming book, it will be a struggle, but less than most, and if you're a professional software engineer with one or two languages under your belt (and reasonable proficiency at the command line), you will find this a great reference for learning, and for doing.

This book has undeniably ignited the enthusiasm of veteran web developers, but it simply cannot be considered a manual for the absolute novice.

As a casual hobbyist, I had high hopes for "Agile...", and for the Ruby on Rails framework generally. I should have heeded, instead, the "Agile.." introduction, which describes the text as a means of allowing professional web developers to become more efficient at their essential tasks.

I'm in no position to judge whether the authors' claims are accurate in this regard. However, I can say with certainty that "Agile..." is no 'for dummies' book.

Beginners should beware the extravagant claims of some reviewers who describe the "Agile..." book's flagship tutorial ('Depot') as a weekend project. I found it extremely time-consuming and, despite being peppered by textbook-style bullet-points, regularly lacking the most essential, big-picture explanations. Diagrams, for instance, would have helped immensely.

This is especially true when, during the Depot tutorial, readers attempt to understand the interaction between files and the folders in which they reside. If beginners find the deceptively simple system rapidly devolves into a conceptual morass, as it did for me, they cannot, perhaps, be faulted. Neither can they expect an easy rescue.

While I found this book extremely disappointing, it clearly ranks as one of the essential tomes for Ruby on Railers. The explanatory narrative and friendly prose are engagingly informal. The authors have diligently formatted chapters into sections which make sense and are clearly delineated. These enticing qualities should not deceive amateur web-enthusiasts. Keep searching for some other, simpler, and more complete book.

You need this book if you're going to be developing a Rails app, but there are some issues.

#1 -- Learn Ruby first. Although the book's jacket makes it seem appropriate for absolute RoR beginners, you need to know basic Ruby before you're ready to start this book. The author says as much in the first chapter. Ruby newbies may want to consider this author's Ruby book (I haven't read it) or the excellent "Beginning Ruby: From Novice to Professional" by Peter Cooper which is enjoyable and very well-written (which I have read).

-- Many (most?) Rails books feel like they were rushed to press. Perhaps I'm just a little too Type A, but the text sometimes reads as if it was dictated rather than written. Much is assumed or left unexplored. A bit more structure within each step of the app-building process would be very helpful in future editions. A quick outline of the app's classes and cethods, describing what each one does, would be helpful as well.

-- A few times the author resolves problems on pages after the code that caused them appears in the text. If you run into a show-stopper, read ahead to see if he resolves it before you go mad trying to debug your own code. A database session problem was especially annoying.

-- Some of the downloadable code examples from the publisher's web site don't seem to match the corresponding code in the book. It's unclear whether the publisher's code has been corrected or simply reformatted. Regardless, download their code and refer to it (or copy and paste it into your own) as you follow along.

So, take a deep breath and dig in!

When approaching a relatively new platform coming from a substantially more established one, the first question that rises is, "what about literature?" This book single-handedly answered any qualms or doubts our team had about Rails documentation/literature. Dave's exposition is bar none as is his knowledge in the subject. His writing is straight forward, no-nonsense, and w/o using arcane/ethereal words to make himself look smarter. This book embodies both the Rails philosophy and the Ruby philosophy; it's simple, to the point and gets the job done. It's about the only book that comes to mind that really does a good job at presenting the framework/language to the beginner, re-inforcing knowledge to the intermediate Rails programmer and teaching new things to advance Ruby programmers. All without confusing or neglecting either target audience. Our team owns several copies of about 7-8 different Rails book, and I can say with confidence that we refer to Mr. Thomas' book about 95% of the time, perhaps more. In short, great book, great author, well organized and a must in your or your team's bookshelf.

Very good book for learning Rails. There is not much focus on the details of Ruby, so if you are new to Ruby AND Rails you'll also need a book on Ruby.

This book, for me, was fantastic! Real world examples for the win! I am still not finished with this book, only half-way through it but, I have to say I have never been as excited about a book than I am about this one.

The very beginning chapters get a functional website application up and running called Depot (an on line book store) and they do this in such a way that you don't have to know the Ruby language (no, it's not scaffolding). As long as you can understand how gears work and fit together and that one turns clockwise and another turns counter clockwise, I don't think you'll have a problem.

With that being said, without knowing Ruby, you may be able to get by on making your own application from scratch but, it will be very rough. The purpose of this book is to teach you about Rails, not Ruby.

My recommendation is, read this book first, before a Ruby book. That way, seeing the Ruby code will be much easier to take in after you see how it works in Rails and to syntax used. Do NOT skimp on learning Ruby after you read this book! You will be sorry! There are TONS more to learn just by learning the language itself. There is more than one way to skin a cat and by learning the rest of the language, you will be more empowered to figure out problems on your own.

The only problem I had with this book was that, in the middle of chapter 5, it skipped back to chapter 3 and finished out chapter 5, chapter 6 and half of chapter 7 was missing. This is the printer's fault, not Amazon's or Pragmatic Programmer's fault. If you happen to get a messed up book, don't contact Amazon, it takes forever. Instead, I contacted Pragmatic Programmer via email and let them know of the situation and to my surprise, they sent me a brand new book still in plastic, priority mail which took about 2 days to get to me! I was just expecting maybe the missing chapters in PDF format but, this shows a lot of character on the part of the company (Pragmatic Programmers). My email was responded to in less than 45 seconds after I hit the "send" button. I would like to offer much praise to the company for this!

If you are a PHP developer, there is another framework that has been modeled after Ruby on Rails called CakePHP. It is fairly new and under heavy development but, the basic principals are the same. The only reason I am plugging them here is, without having learned this framework, I don't think I would have thought about looking at Ruby on Rails. For a super quick breakdown of how MVC pattern works. Be aware that Ruby on Rails is much easier. I think this is due to the nature of PHP and not the framework itself. The devs try their hardest to make it easy for you.

I guess I don't have anything else to say about this except, if you do buy this book, you will not be disappointed.

I've been a software developer for 19+ years, and have been teaching hundreds of programmers for the past year on a wide range of topics...and hands-down...this is the best learn-how-to-program-in-whatever book.

Most other tech books follow certain patterns to get their point across

* deliver concepts in small chunks followed by short samples
* preach endlessly - and then end with a big code-dump
* all text - little code
* too much code - not enough text
* etc...

"Agile Web Dev with Rails" gets the right mix. The first half of the book builds a Shopping Cart application with Ajax features (and even administration screens and REST web interfaces). The second half of the book provides a solid overview of Rails. So you get two books in one -- a great tutorial, and a great Rails reference.

And the tutorial portion is written in a way that you feel as if the author is sitting next to you while doing the exercises. You can hear his thoughts about why certain things are done, or certain code need to be refactored. Using Agile development techniques where the requirements can unfold in real-time, it even sends you down paths only to back-up a few steps once a better-way is discovered (or the mythical client steps in and says they want it done a different way).

[...]

But if you're serious about Ruby on Rails -- just buy the second (current) edition of Programming Ruby along with this book. You'll be glad you did.

...Highly Highly recommend!

Rails is a great web development framework. It makes Java web frameworks look silly. The book is an easy read with great examples. I will be using it to help write our new web frontend of our next product.

I'm almost new to Ruby, have the Pragmatic Programmer Ruby book but it's half read.

Anyway I wanted (in fact needed) to go on with rails and learn ruby on the fly.

This book is what you need if you are in the same situation, it has a very useful Ruby appendix and the book is very well structured, it's a "hands on" book but you won't miss the concepts.

Like many Java developers, I was interested in learning what all the fuss about Rails was about. This is a great book that walks you through building a simple Rails application, learning not only Rails but also some useful agile development techniques that are sometimes forgotten in the Java world (specifically, "Don't Repeat Yourself").

This book was eye opening in that it got me thinking about the benefits of not treating Java as a one-size-fits-all solution to all problems, but rather leveraging the right tools for the right job to create value as quickly as possible and with the highest possible quality. The value of Rails that this book has demonstrated has got me thinking about other tools that could be used when a Java solution would be overkill, such as Python for simple cross platform GUI applications.

I read version 1 of this and have already read this version (pdf early release). I use this book everyday at work where I work with rails.

You simply can't go wrong with this book - The 3 chapters on ActiveRecord
are worth the price alone.

As you can tell from the other reviews, this is a great place to start learning Ruby on Rails, especially if you are new to programming and do not have an extensive background with more than one language/technology.

Developers with a strong background in one (or more) web based technologies/languages/frameworks will find this a little too light at first (the example application - depot), but will learn more in the tutorial reference portion (second half of book) where the authors focus on what exactly is Rails.

Not a lot about Ruby the language, but if you have a strong background in Perl or Python it is not too far of a stretch. I have not found a great Ruby book just yet, so I cannot offer advice on that one.

If you have a strong web programming background then you will most likely want to get something like this...

The Rails Way (Addison-Wesley Professional Ruby Series)

The big pain now will be that Rails 2.0 has been released and the tutorial will frustrate newbies (nothing wrong with that, we are all new at some point) as several commands no longer work as they did in Rails 1.0+ and without a good knowledge of the environment you will be stumped. Fortunately, there is a copy of the depot application in an online tutorial format (http://fairleads.blogspot.com/2007/12/rails-20-and-scaffolding-step-by-step.html) that will aid some of those that get stumped by the tutorial until the 3rd edition comes out and covers Rails 2.0+.

Once you get up and running on Rails and want to build some cool apps, then check out another book by the Pragmatic Programmers publisher Rails Recipes (Pragmatic Programmers)

I have this book and some others and this one by far is the better book. It works at a good pace and answers a lot of questions in sidebars, just as your were thinking of them.

I did go back and get Ruby for Rails to strengthen my Ruby knowledge, but with these two you should have a firm foundation for building Database enabled Web applications.

This is by far one of the best, most usefull books I own. I would recommend buying this book along with the Ruby pickaxe book. Together both books have brought me hours of fun and a few cool projects that I have used for school. Definitely a must have. I went from no previous database knowledge to developing a medical records database overnight. Very solid book, brings you from the ground up to the sky. There is no limit, only those imposed by your imagination. Check out the entire Pragmatic Programmer series, they are truly unlike any other series of technical books. It seems as if the writers have tailored the books to the completely nubile programmer, yet every section is packed with the juicy details that keeps even the most hardened programmer interested. must buy.

This book has a great introduction and tutorial for understanding rails for the beginning rails developer.

However, you may find that a considerable amount of the code in the tutorial does not work with Rails 2.0! Things like pagination and the original scaffolding methods have changed. Nevertheless, if you search through Pragmatic's forums, you may find assistance to help you understand the tutorial through the 2.0 perspective.

Now more about the tutorial itself. It's action packed and the book does a great job to help you dive right into it. The beginning chapters are basic walkthroughs with Rails Playtime in the end. Rails Playtime are tasks that you can try on your own and are absolutely fantastic for getting more grasp on the material. Answers are even available online.

Although a little outdated, Agile Web Development with Rails (2nd Ed.) has been and probably still is the best beginners tutorial for Rails out today.

There's not much more you can say than this: you need this book if you're working with Ruby on Rails.
Of all the technical books I've read (and that's a LOT), only 2 more struck me as being this exceptional: "Graphic Java" by David Geary and "JavaServer Pages" by Hans Bergsten.

I'm more often than not disappointed by books on new technologies. Agile Web Development With Rails is impressive. The tutorial works as described--which is extremely important--and each step is presented in simple, straightforward terms.

My only complaint is the small, grey filename that precedes the code listings--it's not the easiest thing to read.

If you have the first edition of this book, you REALLY need to get this edition, since some of the recommended ways to do things have changed. Even some of the ways to get the first sample applications up and running have changed a bit. To be sure, the changes are for the better. The first edition of this book helped me to get my first Ruby on Rails app up and running and this one makes it easier.

This book is a great resource for newbies to Ruby on Rails. Actually build a working product and learn while you do it.

nothing to say, the book is awsome. and the Amazon with the delivery too. and now im waiting for the Programming ruby book, (bought in amazon too).

Is the best book of ruby on rails. the best to begining!....

Edit: With the release of Rails 2.0 this book is too outdated to be of much value.

First off, if you want to do some dynamic web design RoR is definitely the way to go. Many languages and frameworks claim to handle the messy details so you can work on the application, but are exaggerating, at best. RoR delivers that promise. If you have a little programming experience, you can rip through the first 5 chapters in an hour or two, and have something useful built in very short order.

This book is well written, it is clear and lets you do some fairly impressive things early on, with little effort. The problem is that so many important details are glossed over. Perhaps rails is so good that it hides too many details. It is possible to write a non-trivial application using AJAX, XHTML, mySQL, and of course ruby, without actually understanding any of them.

Maybe this is a good thing, but I am of the school that thinks that a programmer needs to understand the underlying ideas to effectively leverage the higher level API's. But it is very impressive that it is possible to create non-trivial applications without a solid knowledge of Ruby. Try using JSP without understanding Java!

This approach is good for a beginner, because she isn't spending weeks doing lame hello world type projects, but it will also limit what they can do, because they will be tied to scaffolding, and if they ever need to do something in another language, they will be lost there also.

It is maddening for people with some programming experience because they are asking questions that the book doesn't answer. But it is still useful and enjoyable, it gets your feet wet and puts you on the path of creating good rails applications. The book also at least partly tongue in cheek, explains some things away as magic. Things like this make it hard for me to take this book seriously.

I would love it if they created two books out of this one book. One for beginners, and one for more experienced programmers. Books that cater to both often leave one of those two groups in the cold on any given page.

The deployment section is too narrowly focused, and another 30 pages or so would have been more useful to more people. It also points out the main problem with Rails, IMO. It can be difficult to effectively deploy apps on production servers. Not that JSP containers are much simpler, no crappy XML config files to wrestle with and you don't have to install a full blown server like you do with JSP to test on your machine. WebBrick is a very small and very efficient testing platform.

Another major problem is that much of the code examples simply do now work. A lot in the CRUD sections fail, there is not nearly enough information on using SSL in rails, the has and belongs to many examples, etc. Some of these problems may be due to the ever changing nature of rails, but not all of the problems.

Still, this book is a great introduction to what I hope is a framework that will take hold and grow over time. I have no idea how well RoR scales in enterprise projects, but at least for basic and some not so basic web applications, nothing comes close to Rails.

Despite my grumbling, I recommend this book. The first 12 chapters are an excellent tutorial, the remaining book is boring and often misleading or wrong. If you want a serious treatment of this topic, try The Rails Way.

Very good book for learning rails. The only problem I have with it is that it doesn't get too in-depth with why things work and how they work, it just says that they work --this way-- and how to actually use it.

Don't get me wrong, this is a VERY good book. I would recommend it to ALL rails starters. I just wish that it was DOUBLE the size and had this book in the beginning and then a more in-depth behind it. I just ordered ruby for rails thinking this should fill in the whys.

There are mostly good Ruby books out there now. There are lots of so-so Rails books, none really bad, but this is the place to start with Rails.
After this, get Ruby for Rails.

But when using this book, know that you do need to visit the web site of the authors and they do answer emails personally. They also maintain updates to the pdf version and errata on each print and pdf version. They really have put time and effort into making a good book for learning. It isn't perfect, but it's definitely one of those really well-crafted things that are rarely written by computer people for anyone.

DT is a heck of a good communicator or something

This is one of those books that should be in every Rails developer's library. It is a centralized, consistent, and up-to-date reference packed full of useful examples and tips that will save you a lot of time when learning and developing. I can't tell you how nice it is to look something up in the index and read about it instead of searching the net for hours to find scattered and incomplete information.

The book presents itself on a easy language and introduces the core concepts of Rails 1.2 during the already famous "shopping-cart" example.

After that, it explains each of the components and their uses.

Very good even if you're not into Ruby (yet ;))

This book was written over two years ago for version 1.2. The current version of Rails is 2.2. There are many things in this book that simply won't work. I got up to page 67 to find out that the $40 I paid for this book was a waste of money. Amazon should stop selling this book. If you want to learn Rails, don't buy a book, because they will be obsolete. Look for online tutorials instead.

You can buy this second edition half price ($19.95) from publisher at

http://www.pragprog.com/titles/rails2/agile-web-development-with-rails

You can also get the third edition in PDF with hard copy to follow for 53.95 at

http://www.pragprog.com/titles/rails3/agile-web-development-with-rails-third-edition

The publisher says that the release date for the third edition is March 15, 2009.

This is THE book for Rails. Top notch...only WAIT to buy it. As others have said, there is a new edition coming out soon that covers Rails 2.0. Of course...if you can't wait, go to the publisher's web page. They are selling copies of this edition for 50% off, while supplies last. But, some of the code in this book will not work anymore in Rails 2.0. Still, a great book and well worth it even for a quick introduction to the Rails world while you wait for the new edition. Once it's updated, though, for sure, GO FOR IT!

Not only is there a great framework to this textbook will introduce you to, but this is written in the perfect balance of interesting style and serious technical content along with compelling example that I've ever seen in any book. I give this book my very highest recommendation and I give the rails framework five stars as well for being an excellent easy to use and very functional framework.

This book seems to cover everything that I'm interested in and is able to adapt to different levels of knowledge that I'm able to arrive at in programming in Ruby language. The book does not insult the reader and while it challenges the reader doesn't over challenge or overwhelm any point. I can only recommend it for my particular demographic of rails newbies, but I think this book will work very well for anyone else who might be more familiar with Ruby and the rails framework.

This book is a little outdated since Rails 2.0 was released and some methodologies / functions are deprecated. I recommend rolling back your rails version to 1.2 to go through the examples in this book. It is a great learning tool to get you up to speed on Rails.

Easy to follow along, and does a good job teaching the fundamentals. The Depot Program, which walks you through making your very own online store, is an enlightening walk-through.

This book is great I used it in conjunction with online sources to construct my first database driven web app in no time at all It is a bit outdated now that rails 2.0 is out but you can still get a lot of useful information from it.

i've made my way through most of the book already and I really enjoyed reading it. It's got a lot of great advice and help for this noob. Rails is the language of choice for all the cool kids right now, so take the time to learn the basics now!

This book is not easy for beginners, but it is the most accurate and thorough treatment of RoR I have read so far.

This book is a really good inversion if you plan to start you "RoR" experience, the way the book is written is very clear and in a good order, so you can understand better what's going on as you go along.

Great book!

This books explainse everything that is needed to start building a Rails application, even if you know nothing about ruby. The Depot Example is a great guide of how to build a site with Rails

This book manages to keep the pace with the Rails' development and has most of the recent features covered.
I really liked the way it guides you through Rails' application development cycle.
Overall it's an excellent information source for any Rails' developer.

This book is a great intro to Rails, very readable and easy to understand. It also seems fairly comprehensive. The only downside to this book is that it's not Rails 2.0, so a number of the examples are outdated or don't work with the latest versions of Rails (there were significant changes). I was taking a class in Ruby on Rails, and since we were using Rails 2.0, we had to get "The Rails Way" which covers Rails 2.0 but sucks in comparison to this book. "The Rails Way" is a good book for learning Rails if you already know Rails.

I love the framework, the Agile philosophy and I love how the book is structured: straightforward, practical, easy to follow, programmer-oriented.
I truly recommend it for anyone willing to begin in the Rails universe.

This is classics!
I started reading it just to know what is Rails. I ended reading with absolutely involved and loving it!

I didn't know that Rails 2.0.2 does a few things differently than described in the book. Overall, however, I found it to be a great reference, and with a little help from Google and friendly souls who write online tutorials, I was able to create my own application while reading rather than following the example in the book.

I found the explanations on RESTful development somewhat terse and incomplete. However, the treatment of database access is very thorough. I did find it very useful to have my Ruby book nearby.

If this is the version you have installed, I'm sure there will soon be a new edition covering Rails 2.0.2, and given how much the technology is still in flux, it's probably worth waiting for it.

This is the second edition of the book and both are excellent. Of course there is no point in getting the old edition anymore. If you are looking for the fast track to learning Rails this is it. It walks you through the creation of a full featured website with Ajax scripting and all. Then the Rails framework itself is explained in a straight forward manner. If you get a single Rails book then I recommend this one.

Do a rail install of version 2.6.4 first otherwise the scaffolding doesn't work. How to install scaffolding with a new rails version is not explained. Very good tutor and introduction to Ruby on Rails.

I would recommend this book to beginner and intermediate rails users. The first half of the book walks you through building a very simple rails application to get some hands on experience then the second half includes everything you need to know about rails. The second half is an invaluable reference for me. Some prior programming experience will give you a huge head start but is not mandatory.

This book is awesome!

Ruby On Rails will be the mother of all programming languages!

This is an excellent book for someone who is new to Ruby on Rails development. You should buy an accompanying Ruby book though for those pesky Ruby questions =).

Of all the books I have read about ruby on rails, this is the most comprehensive and easy to understand, even without deep ruby knowledge.

Ruby on Rails is not just a locomotive moving on down the line. It is a bullet train moving at two hundred miles an hour. I say this because Agile Web Development With Rails is already in its second edition in only a year and a half. There has been that much change to the base framework to warrant an upgrade to the book in so little time.

What is Ruby on Rails - also known as Rails? It is a framework that makes it easier to develop, deploy, and maintain web applications. It uses Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture as do many Java frameworks, but Rails takes it further in that it is almost as if you start out with the skeleton of an application already prepared. Rails is written in Ruby, a modern, object-oriented scripting language that runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac.

A couple of things I really like about the book and the publisher is that you can buy the book as a standard book as well as a PDF e-book. For a real discount you can get both. To me, this is a bonus since I like having the physical book to hold and read, but when I am working on something or traveling, I can still reference the material without locating the book. I also liked the detailed explanations contained in the footnotes. The authors do not try to overwhelm you with every detail in the dialog. Rather they are saying there is more information if you need it.

In my full review over at Blogcritics I found that at over 700 pages, Agile Web Development With Rails does a great job of taking you to the next level of Rails development. It provides you with a rich depth of information into the Rails framework and gives you the skills to bring your development to the next level.

Clear, easy to read as well as easy to follow.
If you're interested in Ruby on Rails, it's definitely a must.

I'm a new object oriented programmer (I only program for a hobby) and this book has been a great aid in my learning of Ruby on Rails. The book contains lots of useful examples and covers the various aspects of Rails in depth. The first few chapters provide a high level overview of Ruby on Rails. The next few walk you through developing a online store. The last several chapters cover Rails in depth, it also explains a lot of the concepts used during the extended online store example.

Agile Web Development with Rails (2nd edition) is excellent and I highly recommend it to someone wanting to learn Rails. However, I do have a reservation. The extended example is a bit simplistic. It covers enough stuff to introduce you to the different part of Rails that is needed to build a website, but it doesn't cover everything you would need to do to actually build a production website...though the rest of the book touches on some of the missing parts of the example.

Also note, the book doesn't teach you object oriented programming, but that is not what it is far. It does have a short appendix explaining Ruby. If you're a quick learner, you should be able to pick up everything you need without buying another programming book. Nonetheless, I think having another book to teach Ruby and Object Oriented Programming concepts as a reference guide would be of great help.

The book is to the point while still pleasant to read. It is the right book for the killer framework/application of 'Ruby On Rails'.

My personal recommendation is that it delivers the highest reward to mid-level and experienced developers from J2EE. Those guys will have an eye-opening experience of "how simple" web development can be, using the right tool. A beginner though should also refer to other sources, like HTML standards and articles on MVC pattern, before or while reading this book.

Great book, very detailed examples. I recommend it for anyone just starting out with rails.

This book is very good, but I strongly SUGGEST and cannot hardly STRESS ENOUGH for every newbie with Ruby on Rails -- LEARN RUBY FIRST.
I am telling you, this will benefit thousand times later when you start developing.

At the moment I am writing this review this 2nd edition of the books is outdated, as we have even Rails 3 coming soon. ;-)

A concise and accurate tutorial and reference to the Ruby on Rails framework.

Starting with the simple (and not very useful in real life..) "shopping cart" project the book demonstrates RoR web application fundamentals step by step. Shopping cart is a good, quick way to get acquainted with Rails if you are a newbie as I am.

When done building and playing with shopping cart you'll want to start designing your own ideas. Agile's following chapters include reference material which lets easily getting deeper understanding of how the framework is built and how it works. You'll find plenty of information of how to customize whatever you need to customize, as well as explanations of low level functions and APIs which are not used in the tutorial but may very well be used in more advanced applications.

Used to pretty good PHP online documentation available online I was hoping to learn RoR the same way, but RoR is different, and as far as I can tell there's simply no good tutorials available online. If you're in for learning RoR, buy the book, you won't regret.
I would recommend getting the 3rd edition (no hard copies yet) which covers RoR version 2.2.

(BTW - I've done most of the learning on my personal WinXP machine, and some on http://www.heroku.com, where you can write and run RoR apps online)

OK, I'm coming to rails late. I've played with Ruby on and off for about a year. I though it was a bit of a "kitchen sink" language until I got a good kick in the head by Neil Ford.

So this week I picked up this book (version 2) and I started reading it. It is, as far as technical books go, a page turner.

It gives a basic overview and the walks through an example as a tutorial.

I recommend you learn a little Ruby first (not necessary but makes working through the examples more focused on Rails rather than Ruby and Rails).

If you want to learn about Ruby on Rails and get an idea of what web development should be, read this book. THEN, the next time you need to start working on a site for a customer, sit down with them and start developing the site in real-time.

If they don't like Ruby, call it an "executable requirements description". Eventually, they might even think that the solution is good as is. If not, you still have a better explanation of where to go.

After Rails, I'm going back to RSpec and story tests and examine the maturity of developing a Ruby solution using TDD. I'm pretty sure it's already being done, so I just need to get on that learning curve.

This is a GREAT book. Get it, read it, TYPE in the examples - ok maybe download the CSS's and the style-sheet.

WARNING: the material related to OS X installation is a bit out of date. Use macports and install mysql, rb-mysql, rails, ruby (and I'm probably forgetting something), change your path to point to where that stuff got installed (probably /opt/local/bin/) and you'll be good to go - once you get mysql setup. There are some chicken scratchings here: http://schuchert.wikispaces.com/Ruby.RailsConfiguration.OSX, or do a google search. It'll be October 2008 before I actually put up good details, but it'll happen.

I wanted to learn something about RoR and this book is perfect!
Easy to read, easy to understand, with a lot of examples, perfect for beginners & for advanced users because in the middle explain a lot of interesting things!
i recommend to buy it

Great book to start off with. Has a good tutorial on building a shopping cart application. Then one can learn from that to develop a application that is unique for their business.

When I came onto a new project, I needed to learn Rails fast. This book got me up and running in no time. Despite being new to Ruby, I found the examples easy to follow and the sample application easy to work with. This book is the gold standard when it comes to Rails.