Acknowledgments

This has been an amazing process, full of amazing people. A large portion of this book would not have been possible without the support of my employer, Mikel Lind-saar, and company, RubyX, allowing me to take time off to write the book. The support of the community at large has also been enormous in helping me complete this book. Winning the Ruby Hero award at RailsConf, partially due to my work on this very book, was the highlight of my career so far. After I won the award, Mikel also provided me with a new laptop at no expense to replace my previous one that was three years old. Bloody champion!

Of course, a lot of this wouldn’t have been as easy if it wasn’t for the Rails Core Team’s valiant efforts on their maintenance of the framework over the years and their constant focus on improving people’s lives on an almost daily basis. Also there are Yehuda Katz, Carl Lerche, and André Arko to thank for their work on an important part of developing not only Rails applications, but also Ruby libraries such as Bundler and Thor. These people are my idols, and I love them dearly.

Through a Rails-based review system called Twist that I built myself over a single day, I’ve collected more than 1,200 notes from people from around the world who have been reviewing the book as I have been writing it. A special mention goes to the three people who’ve left the most notes in Twist: Roy Hacker, Deryl Doucette, and Peter Ley. An almost-as-special mention goes to the 33 other people who’ve also left notes. Without your help, this book wouldn’t be half as brilliant as it is today.

Also thanks to Tim McEwan for the ideas for the engines chapter, Chris Darroch for an initial read-through of the first chapters, and Rob Zolkos for helping with some gnarly ePub Ruby and XLST code. And yes, thanks to Andrew Snow for assisting with a difficult moral problem in chapter 16 at Railscamp in June 2011.

In addition to those who’ve been leaving notes in Twist, there are the people at Manning. First, thanks to Christina Rudloff for the initial contact and Michael Stephens for the late-night chats and management of the process. Candace Gillhooley and Nick Chase have also been enormously helpful.

Cynthia Kane, my development editor at Manning, is particularly special. Her job was to tell me when I was doing things wrong, such as not segueing between sections or making the text flow too fast, and to leave me notes such as “FIGURE!!!” when I needed an image to go along with the text. Our almost weekly catch-ups were well worthwhile; it was great always having someone there, prodding me for more content and talking through the process. Marjan Bace, fearless leader of Manning Publications, should also be credited for supporting this project for as long as it has been around.

The production team at Manning, including Troy Mott, has been great throughout this process too. The extreme focus they’ve shown in finishing this book is stunning. I also need to mention the wonderful work by Doug Warren in the final technical proofing of the book, as well as Manning’s copyeditors, who touched up basically every single paragraph in the book.

Special thanks to the reviewers who took time out of their busy schedules to provide feedback on the manuscript at different stages during development. They include Jason Rogers, Craig Smith, Emmanuel Asante, Chad Moone, Dr. Jamie P. Finlay, Dave Nicolette, Grant Oladipo, Jean-Philippe Castro, Americo Savinon, Thomas Athanas, Chris Kelly, Greg Vaughn, Pete Helgren, Joshua R Cronemeyer, Peter Melo, Robby O’Connor, Philip Hallstrom, Curtis Miller, Patrick Peak, Anthony J. Topper, Brian Rose, Daniel Bretoi, Wesley Moxam, and David Workman

Finally, my friends and family have been amazing throughout my entire life, all the way from my parents—who supported my career choice in Ruby on Rails and technical writing, even though they paid for me to study Network Admin at TAFE and always told me that I should “get out the house more”—to my current housemate, who accepts that we don’t see much of each other (or at least I think so). You’re all wonderful people, and I hope now that the book is over I will see more of you. I would list you all here if only it didn’t require this book to be printed in a multivolume series.

RYAN BIGG

Rails 3 in Action is a long-time coming. To give you some perspective, the book was originally called Merb in Action, and it managed a perpetual beta through the Merb merge, the release of Rails 3.0, and is finally ready just in time for Rails 3.1.

I can say with confidence that Rails 3 in Action would not exist without the hard, tireless work of Ryan Bigg. It was Ryan’s idea to focus the book around real-world testing from the ground up, and it makes Rails 3 in Action the first book for Rails practitioners that teaches Rails the way professional Rails developers do it.

Since we merged Merb with Rails, I have had the benefit of not insignificant support from friends and family, who helped keep me on course in the long process that eventually delivered Rails 3.0. I want to especially call out Aaron Patterson, José Valim, Santiago Pastorino, and Xavier Noria, who stepped up and brought life back to a community that was starting to show signs of age by the time Rails 2.3 hit the shelves. And Carl Lerche, who helped me keep focus on doing things right, even when it was tempting not to.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t thank my wife, Leah, who has been there for me through the amazing trajectory of my development career, through good times and bad. Without her, I would have given up long ago.

YEHUDA KATZ