Simply Rails 2: The Ultimate Beginner's Guide to Ruby on Rails

by Patrick Lenz

Want to learn all about Ruby on Rails 2.0, the web application framework that is inspiring developers around the world? The second edition of this practical, hands on book will: show you how to... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0980455200
• ISBN13: 9780980455205
• Release Date: May 2008
• Publisher: Sitepoint
• Length: 450 Pages
• Weight: 1.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 7.1" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Terrific book; great intro to Ruby and RoR

Patrick gives a terrific intro to Ruby and RoR through the book-long creation of a sample application from scratch to something pretty impressive. While I'm far from a Ruby or Rails expert, with the background and experience obtained from SR2, I'm able to easily fly through 'the' reference books and find what I need (The Rails Way, The Ruby Way). What I didn't expect to find and did! - Introduction to Ruby - Introduction to OOP - Such a strong focus on testing (though not TDD, hence the 4 stars) - A full chapter on debugging and performance analysis! (yes!!) Here's why you need to buy this book: - Consolidated Rails 2 information, one of the only of its kind that gets consistently good reviews. - Pauses in the ride to introduce important concepts like REST, rather than just telling you to do something without giving you the background to understand why Rails 2 is focused on resources. - Conversational writing style; easy to read and understand. Unlike the book on Flash I have, you won't have to read things twice or wonder what the heck you're supposed to be doing with an example. Overall, I'm very happy with this purchase and have recommended it to anyone I know interested in RoR.

Excellent Beginner Book

This book is excellent, if you know nothing of Ruby on Rails, and know very little of other programming languages. It is a book to introduce you to Rails (and Ruby) without going into too much of the technical aspects. This will in no way make you proficient at developing Rails applications, however, it introduces you to the fundamentals (especially testing) of rails with which you can go and watch screen screencasts, follow tutorials or read other books on rails with a basic understanding of the process. I do NOT recommend this book to anyone trying to further along their Rails training (nor is it intended for that). I DO recommend this for anyone who has picked up a rails book or watched a screencast and blindly started to regurgitate the code that is being taught without understanding what it is supposed to do. This book will explain it. A (free) tutorial with which I recommend in conjunction with this book is: [..] This tutorial goes into gory detail over (nearly) every basic step that you need to know to start your Rails apps. I have read nearly 10 books , plus countless screencasts and tutorials (mostly outdated due to Rails 2.0) on Rails and Simply Rails 2 is by far the most up-to-date and easy to read for a true beginner.

Awesome explanation!

I have to concur with the previous reviews on this site. I'd been searching for months for a good Rails 2 book, and, at last, I have found one. It doesn't start with a massive, unwieldly tutorial, one that throws everything at you at once ("look: scaffolding! look: helpers! look: I'm horribly lost! :-) but actually takes the time to coherently explain the underlying structure, and builds on that explanation step-by-step. The diagrams are great -- if anything, the book could use more, e.g., showing the tie between controller actions and views. If I were to teach a course in Rails -- and I very well might -- this would be my hands-down choice. If you need to learn Rails, Simply Rails 2 is simply the best out there.

Hands down leading tutorial book on Rails 2.0

Amongst the plethora of Rails books, only a few cover 2.0+, and even fewer do a decent job of it. This book covers Rails 2.0.2 incrementally from the ground up, and there's even a decent intro to Ruby for those completely new to the language. Patrick Lenz thoroughly covers the basics, RESTful routing, plugins, testing, etc., and also teaches several tips, tricks, and shortcuts of the trade...things that you may not easily deduce by reading the API. Practically every concept covered is matched with hands-on exercises while developing the book's application. The code is accurate and virtually errata-free. There were only a couple of times that I had a question. I emailed Patrick, he responded literally within minutes, and was very helpful! I have read several Rails books. Yet this is only the second book I've read that truly practices what it preaches about testing (and the other was Patrick's first version for Rails 1.2.x: Build Your Own Ruby on Rails Web Applications). If you want to learn Rails, or already know Rails pre-2.0 and want to get up to speed on the new features and functionality of Rails 2.0+, or finally commit to proper testing, buy this book and take the time to work through and understand every exercise. I think you will be very glad you did.