Subscriber Reviews

Average Rating:  Based on 6 Ratings

"Fantastic!" - by Bala on 30-MAY-2011
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I have read Rails book(s) in the past for previous version of Rails and some really inspired me to dig deeper into Rails.  This is one such a book for Rails 3.  Very useful and practical examples.  Well done guys!.
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"Beginning Rails 3" - by Kelly Brant on 23-FEB-2011
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I found Beginning Rails 3 to be a gentle introduction to rails. I came from a C/java background and comfortable with ruby, sql and bash.

Intro: Ch 1,2,3 contain the obligatory 'getting started' material. Fortunately the material is easily digestible and relatively brief. I wanted to build the sample application as I read the material and went through processes of updating rails (on OS X) and getting the first app running. Everything here worked on my laptop as described in the book.

Models: Ch 4,5 walk through just enough ORM to carry the reader through the rest of the book. The authors didn't get wrapped up in sidebar discussions of ActiveRecord outside the scope of the sample project. I liked using the rails console to learn the minimum basics of creating and using models.

Controllers/Views: Ch. 6,7 walk through building the 'web side' of the app based on the models from the previous two chapters. A good understanding of the models before building the controllers and views made the exercise much easier to follow and anticipate.

Samplers: Ch 8, 10, 11 are sampler chapters each of which could warrant an entire volume. A consistent theme throughout the book is 'just enough' and these sampler chapters give the flavor if not the feast. The chapter on ajax replaces prototype with jquery (thank you) and ajaxifies a single form. It's enough to get started. The chapter on internationalization gives just one approach to creating a multilingual site. It's an ugly problem and this book should only be viewed as an introduction--a good introduction but an introduction nonetheless. The same can be said for the chapter on testing. For someone just getting into rails, the material on writing tests is enough without being overwhelming.

Skipped: I read but skipped working the tutorial for Ch 9, 12, 13. The material seemed simple enough and I felt the other chapters gave me an adequate base of understanding to start working on a simple app of my own.

These guys really worked to keep their code clean and in sync with the book. I kept getting an warning (Object#id will be deprecated; use Object#object_id) on a partial when working through the chapter on testing. It turned out that the error was upstream (a case of id vs. :id). I downloaded the chapter source and diff'd against my work. Aside from some whitespace differences (and typo's on my part), the files matched.

This is where I'd normally offer my suggested revisions. I really don't have any. This is, after all, *Beginning* Rails 3. No book can cover everything. Nor should it try. So, what's next? Speaking for myself, the next book to read is on test development.

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"Disappointing" - by Tharnid on 09-SEP-2010
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I made it to pg. 43 and couldn't get past adding excerpt and location to the database.  I am not sure what is wrong.  No errata on the Apress site.  Here is the problem area.  I generated the db migration and it doesn't like this line of code:

class AddExcerptAndLocationToArticles.rb > ActiveRecord::Migration

Not sure what is wrong with this :-(

I am getting really frustrated with the lack of error free code in these books.
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