Agile Web Development with Rails, 4th Edition

Ruby on Rails helps you produce high-quality, beautiful-looking web applications quickly. You concentrate on creating the application, and Rails takes care of the details.

Tens of thousands of developers have used this award-winning book to learn Rails. It’s a broad, far-reaching tutorial and reference that’s recommended by the Rails core team. If you’re new to Rails, you’ll get step-by-step guidance. If you’re an experienced developer, this book will give you the comprehensive, insider information you need.

Rails has evolved over the years, and this book has evolved along with it. We still start with a step-by-step walkthrough of building a real application, and in-depth chapters look at the built-in Rails features. This edition now gives new Ruby and Rails users more information on the Ruby language and takes more time to explain key concepts throughout. Best practices on how to apply Rails continue to change, and this edition keeps up. Examples use cookie backed sessions, HTTP authentication, and Active Record-based forms, and the book focuses throughout on the right way to use Rails. Additionally, this edition now reflects Ruby 1.9, a new release of Ruby with substantial functional and performance improvements.

Table of Contents

Part 1 Getting Started
Chapter 1 Installing Rails
Chapter 2 Instant Gratification
Chapter 3 The Architecture of Rails Applications
Chapter 4 Introduction to Ruby

Part 2 Building an Application
Chapter 5 The Depot Application
Chapter 6 Task A: Creating the Application
Chapter 7 Task B: Validation and Unit Testing
Chapter 8 Task C: Catalog Display
Chapter 9 Task D: Cart Creation
Chapter 10 Task E: A Smarter Cart
Chapter 11 Task F: Add a Dash of Ajax
Chapter 12 Task G: Check Out!
Chapter 13 Task H: Sending Mail
Chapter 14 Task I: Logging In
Chapter 15 Task J: Internationalization
Chapter 16 Task K: Deployment and Production
Chapter 17 Depot Retrospective

Part 3 Rails In Depth
Chapter 18 Finding Your Way Around Rails
Chapter 19 Active Record
Chapter 20 Action Dispatch and Action Controller
Chapter 21 Action View
Chapter 22 Caching
Chapter 23 Migrations
Chapter 24 Non-Browser Applications
Chapter 25 Rails’ Dependencies
Chapter 26 Rails Plugins
Chapter 27 Where to Go From Here