
Learning Rails: Live Edition
Publisher: O'Reilly Media
Release Date: July 2010
Pages: 480
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Ready to learn Rails? Get up to speed using the framework’s latest release. In this Live Edition, Learning Rails has been updated to cover Rails 2.3.5, making it an ideal guide for Rails beginners.
Unlike most Rails books, Learning Rails is for web developers, and not for programmers. Rather than begin with the inner layers of a Rails web application -- the models and controllers -- this book approaches Rails development from the outer layer: the view side of an application. You’ll start from the foundations of the Web you already know, and learn how to create something visible with Rails before reaching the more difficult database models and controller code. Each chapter includes exercises and review questions so you can test your understanding as you go.
- Present content by building an application with a basic view and a simple controller, while learning Ruby along the way
- Build forms and process their results, progressing from simple to more complex
- Connect forms to models by setting up a database, and use Rails’ Active Record to create code that maps to database structures
- Use Rails scaffolding to build applications from a view-centric perspective
- Add common web application elements such as sessions, cookies, and authentication
- Build applications that combine data from multiple tables
- Create simple but dynamic interfaces with Rails and Ajax
Table of Contents
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Chapter 1 Starting Up Ruby on Rails
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Getting Started at the Command Line
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What Server Is That?
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Test Your Knowledge
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Chapter 2 Rails on the Web
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Creating Your Own View
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What Are All Those Folders?
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Adding Some Data
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How Hello World Works
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Protecting Your View from the Controller
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Parentheses Are (Usually) Optional
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Adding Logic to the View
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Test Your Knowledge
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Chapter 3 Adding Web Style
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I Want My CSS!
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Layouts
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Setting a Default Page
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Test Your Knowledge
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Chapter 4 Controlling Data Flow: Controllers and Models
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Getting Started, Greeting Guests
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Application Flow
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Keeping Track: A Simple Guestbook
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Finding Data with ActiveRecord
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Test Your Knowledge
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Chapter 5 Accelerating Development with Scaffolding and REST
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A First Look at Scaffolding
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REST and Controller Best Practices
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Examining a RESTful Controller
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Escaping the REST Prison
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Test Your Knowledge
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Chapter 6 Presenting Models with Forms
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More Than a Name on a Form
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Generating HTML Forms with Scaffolding
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Form As a Wrapper
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Creating Text Fields and Text Areas
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Creating Checkboxes
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Creating Radio Buttons
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Creating Selection Lists
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Dates and Times
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Labels
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Creating Helper Methods
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Putting the Form Body in a Partial
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Test Your Knowledge
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Chapter 7 Strengthening Models with Validation
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Without Validation
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The Original Model
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The Power of Declarative Validation
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Managing Secrets
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A Place on the Calendar
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Beyond Simple Declarations
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Test Your Knowledge
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Chapter 8 Improving Forms
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Adding a Picture by Uploading a File
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Standardizing Your Look with Form Builders
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Test Your Knowledge
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Chapter 9 Developing Model Relationships
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Connecting Awards to Students
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Connecting Students to Awards
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Nesting Awards in Students
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Many-to-Many: Connecting Students to Courses
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What’s Missing?
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Test Your Knowledge
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Chapter 10 Managing Databases with Migrations
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What Migrations Offer You
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Migration Basics
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Inside Migrations
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Test Your Knowledge
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Chapter 11 Debugging
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Creating Your Own Debugging Messages
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Logging
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Working with Rails from the Console
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The Ruby Debugger
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Test Your Knowledge
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Chapter 12 Testing
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Test Mode
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Setting Up a Test Database with Fixtures
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Unit Testing
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Functional Testing
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Integration Testing
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Beyond the Basics
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Test Your Knowledge
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Chapter 13 Sessions and Cookies
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Getting Into and Out of Cookies
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Storing Data Between Sessions
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Test Your Knowledge
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Chapter 14 Users and Authentication
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Installation
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Storing User Data
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Controlling Sessions
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Classifying Users
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More Options
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Test Your Knowledge
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Chapter 15 Routing
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Creating Routes to Interpret URIs
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Generating URIs from Views and Controllers
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Infinite Possibilities
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Test Your Knowledge
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Chapter 16 Creating Dynamic Interfaces with Rails and Ajax
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Ajax Basics
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Supporting Ajax with Rails
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Managing Enrollment through Ajax
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Moving Further into Ajax
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Test Your Knowledge
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Chapter 17 Mail in Rails
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Sending Text Mail
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Sending HTML Mail
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Sending Complex HTML Email
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Receiving Mail
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Test Your Knowledge
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Chapter 18 Securing, Managing, and Deploying Your Rails Projects
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Securing Your Application
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Deploying Rails Applications
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Test Your Knowledge
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Chapter 19 Making the Most of Rails—And Beyond
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Keep Up with Rails
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Plug-ins
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Ruby
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Web Services
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Explore Other Ruby Frameworks
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Migrating Legacy Applications to Rails
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Keep Exploring
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Appendix An Incredibly Brief Introduction to Ruby
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How Ruby Works
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How Rails Works
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Getting Started with Classes and Objects
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Comments
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Variables, Methods, and Attributes
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Logic and Conditionals
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Appendix An Incredibly Brief Introduction to Relational Databases
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Tables of Data
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Databases, Tables, and Rails
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Appendix An Incredibly Brief Guide to Regular Expressions
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What Regular Expressions Do
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Starting Small
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The Simplest Expressions: Literal Strings
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Character Classes
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Escaping
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Modifiers
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Anchors
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Sequences, Repetition, Groups, and Choices
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Greed
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More
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Appendix A Catalog of Helper Methods
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Calling Helper Methods
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ActiveRecordHelper
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AssetTagHelper
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AtomFeedHelper and AtomFeedHelper::AtomFeedBuilder
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BenchmarkHelper, CacheHelper, and CaptureHelper
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DateHelper
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DebugHelper
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FormHelper, FormTagHelper, and FormOptionsHelper
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JavaScriptHelper
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NumberHelper
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PrototypeHelper
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RecordIdentificationHelper
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SanitizeHelper
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ScriptaculousHelper
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TagHelper
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TextHelper
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UrlHelper
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Appendix Glossary
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Speaking in Rails
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Colophon