What are the best Ruby / Rails book available right now ?
Note : I know that this question has probably been asked before. But things change so much in the Ruby / Rails world that some of the books are not up to date or even teaches things that are deprecated in the newer release of Ruby / Rails.
For learning Rails and Ruby, I typically recommend (and refer to!):
Agile Web Development with Rails - Pragmatic Bookshelf (and co-written by DHH - creator of Rails)
The Rails Way - Addison-Wesley
Programming Ruby (The pickaxe book) - Pragmatic Bookshelf
The Ruby Programming Language - O'Reailly
Recently came across this article which mentions a good number of Ruby and Rails books.
In my opinion the best book is still SitePoint-Patrick Lenz-Simply Rails 2 and the unforgotten one Agile Web Development with Rails, Third Edition, but you can start with rails guides to have a newbie tutorial.
Agile Web Development with rails
Head First Rails
I don't normally see this book recommended, but if you are a PHP developer, Rails for PHP Developers is an excellent book.
Related
If I want to build web application that the server side will be in ruby on rails, I need to learn ruby language in order to that?
I need to mentioned that I am new to ruby and to ruby on rails.
In addition I will be happy for a short explanation what I need to do first in order to do the right steps.
Thanks!!!
Well I just started learning Ruby on Rails and according to my experience I started with learning Rails using Micheal Hartl's guidelines book on Ruby on Rails. Along with that I learned Ruby from Peter Cooper's Beginning Ruby, this helped me learn both the language and Framework with hand on experience.
This should be good to get started with Ruby on Rails. Other than this there are other really good materials like Learn Ruby Hard Way. The best way is to start practicing.
I'm specifically looking for 'Getting Started' or 'Cookbook' that deals with RoR 2.3.5. It's primarily because my webhost supports RoR 2.3.5 and not the latest and greatest - 3.0 Pointers would be appreciated to docs!
As #Markus said railstutorial.org is the best resource for getting started with rails (2 and 3).
HOWEVER, I highly recommend starting with Rails 3. It's a big change going from 2 to 3 and might as well start with the best that's currently out there.
Also, the fact that your current webhost supports rails 2 shouldn't be an issue since you can host small sites on Heroku for free. And what do ya know, railstutorial.org will teach you how to use Heroku as well.
http://ruby.railstutorial.org/ruby-on-rails-tutorial-book
You can switch between Rails 3 and Rails 2.3 on the right.
www.railscasts.com
you can find any kind of tutuorial/screencast here.
www.peepcode.com. Not free, but not expensive either. Very good tutorials about rails 2
I am interested in building web applications using Ruby on Rails. I surfed the Internet and found out that I need to have a prior knowledge of the Ruby language. So can you please suggest some good books, online resources to start off with Ruby first and then Ruby on Rails?
Thanks,
Rakesh.
As far as Ruby goes, two good books are:
Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmers' Guide by Dave Thomas, Chad Fowler, and Andy Hunt
The Ruby Way, Second Edition: Solutions and Techniques in Ruby Programming by Hal Fulton
Check out this link also for some helpful sites:
http://ruby.about.com/od/tutorialsontheweb/tp/10waysfree.htm
You may also find RailsCast is useful too. :)
i also find above mentioned site Ruby on Rails tutorial quite helpful.. After this i suggest you can refer some of mentioned books to gain more experience in this language and framework.
* The Ruby Programming Language
* Rails 3 Way,
* Advanced Rails Recipes
There is also Why's famous guide: http://poignant.guide/book/
Is there a book about Ruby On Rails for someone that has little or no understanding of Ruby?
Although Ruby On Rails is a great reason to start learning Ruby, I'd be bored out of my pants if I first have to read a full book on Ruby and then a book about Ruby On Rails.
Something that demonstrates the basic principles of both Ruby and Ruby On Rails would be an ideal intro to this world.
Agile Web Development with Rails (Thomas, Heinemeier Hansson) is a good intro to rails, and introduces Ruby gently along the way, you don't need to know ruby to read it.
http://www.amazon.com/Agile-Web-Development-Rails-Programmers/dp/097669400X
AWDWR is a good place to start. A couple other books worth looking at are Simply Rails 2 and Foundation Rails 2. Veger does have a good point too; without a certain level of Ruby knowledge you will struggle in some areas with Rails.
I would personally recommend checking out why's Poignant Guide to Ruby: http://poignant.guide/ first to get familiar with ruby, it makes it entertaining to learn. Then for Rails I would recommend Agile Web Development with Rails.
Simply Rails 2 By Patrick Lenz is a good Rails introduction for someone with very little Ruby experience. But you will need another Ruby and Rails book or resource to really master both.
A good free alternative is Ruby on Rails Tutorial. It's a work in progress, but even the first 6 chapters helped me out a bunch.
It is wise to first learn the (basics of a) language before using more advanced frameworks in order to fully make use of the framework. Same goes for Ruby and Ruby On Rails.
Personally, I had the same problem. But I found a nice Ruby book (Mr. Neighborly's Humble Little Ruby Book, explaining Ruby in a none/less boring way. I thought it was actually fun to read!
After learning the basics of Ruby you can start looking at the (somewhat) official guides. They are easy to understand and shows a lot of Ruby On Rails basics (and more advanced stuff).
I have been studying Ruby for the past few days and I have noticed there is Ruby on Rails.
What is the difference between the two? Do they work together? Is the syntax the same?
Ruby is a programming language. Ruby on Rails ("RoR") is a web-application framework that is implemented in Ruby.
So they not only "work together" but RoR depends on Ruby.
Ruby is a general purpose language. Ruby on Rails is a Ruby framework for implementing web applications.
Ruby is an interpreted scripting language for quick and easy object-oriented programming.
Ruby is a programming Language
Ruby on Rails is web-development framework.
You can read more in "Small Discussion about Ruby on Rails".
Just like PHP has Codeigniter , CakePHP and Laravel, similarly, Ruby has Ruby on Rails ("RoR").
Ruby is a scripting language and Rails is a framework which is built using Ruby.
Ruby and Rails are tightly coupled and "Rails is magic emerged out of Ruby". Whatever you write in a Rails application is just Ruby code.
When you run a Rails application, you are just interpreting the Ruby code using Ruby's interpreter.
Ruby on Rails is a library written in the Ruby language. Its popularity prompted many people to take up writing in Ruby to make use of it, which led many people to treat them as inseparable. :)