Lewis - Rails crash course a no-nonsense guide to Rails development

Ruby on Rails turned web development upside down. By abstracting the core of web programming in an unparalleled way, this unique piece of technology changed the game forever. With Rails, you can write web applications quickly without compromising quality. You can be very productive, write little code, deal with almost no configuration, and adapt to changes in specifications with agility, all while keeping a well-organized and elegant code base.

With Ruby on Rails, you feel empowered. Want to explore something with a quick prototype? Delivered in no time. Need to develop a solid production-ready website? Presto!

A decade later, the fundamental principles underlying the Rails breakthrough still permeate and drive the design of the framework and the way Rails applications are developed. Youll learn about these fundamental aspects of the Rails culture explicitly in the second chapter of Rails Crash Course and implicitly by example throughout the book.

While the foundational ideas behind Ruby on Rails remain key, the framework has evolved. Ruby on Rails has been extended here, shrunk there, iterated, and refined. The world in which Rails applications live has also evolved. Rails Crash Course presents the most modern and idiomatic Ruby on Rails.

But first things first. Ruby on Rails is a web framework written in the Ruby programming language. Think about Rails as a huge Ruby library: A Rails application is written in Ruby and uses the classes and core support provided by Ruby on Rails. Therefore, you definitely have to know some Ruby in order to write Ruby on Rails applications! The first chapter of Rails Crash Course introduces Ruby in case you are not familiar with it. Ruby is a powerful programming language, but it is easy to learn, and with that quick introduction, youll know enough to begin. Later, more advanced Ruby is explained.

Once you know some Ruby, youre going to learn Rails. All aspects of the framework are covered, including how to write models that get persisted easily in a database, how to validate data, how to handle web requests, how to serve HTML, and so on.

Rails Crash Course covers all sides of Ruby on Rails, but then it takes you beyond the basics. For example, youll learn some advanced Active Record, authentication, and how to write an application that provides a REST API, but youll also learn about testing, security, performance, debugging, and other practical concerns of writing real-world web applications.

Further, Rails Crash Course guides you step-by-step all the way through uploading your application to production platforms and seeing it run on the Internet. Thats an amazing experience. Youll learn how to deploy to Heroku and how to deploy to a computer in the Amazon cloud. While the servers needed to run an application for learning are small and free, they are the real thing: Youll upload to the exact same services big companies are deploying their applications to. Rails Crash Course is a superb introduction to Ruby on Rails, and by reading it, youll get a solid understanding of Ruby on Rails and its ecosystem in a broad sense.

Welcome, and enjoy!

Xavier Noria
Cubelles, Spain
July 2014

First, Id like to thank everyone at No Starch Press for giving me the opportunity to write this book. Jennifer Griffith-Delgado guided me through the process of writing this book. As a first-time author, I found her corrections and suggestions invaluable. Serena Yang managed the production of the book and kept everything moving forward even as I dragged my feet at times.

Xavier Noria did an outstanding job as the technical reviewer. Not only did he make sure the code samples were correct and followed best practices, he also pointed out several places where my explanations could be better. If there are any mistakes left in this book, Im sure its only because I didnt correct them when he pointed them out.

I am grateful to Tim Taylor for introducing me to programming by teaching me BASIC on a Commodore 64 in the 7th grade. Weve come a long way since then. Id also like to thank a few more of my friends from the Paris Independent School District who convinced me that I could teach even though Im not really a teacher: Karol Ackley, Paula Alsup, Denise Kornegay, Dee Martin, and Frances Reed.

Thanks to everyone in the amazing Austin technology community. Special thanks to Austin on Rails and its founder Damon Clinkscales. Thank you to everyone who attended one of my Rails classes or conference sessions. This book grew out of the curriculum I developed for those classes. Your questions and comments helped clarify the material in this book.

Finally, my most heartfelt thanks to my family: my wife, Paige, and our sons, Matthew and Wyatt. The book is finally done; lets go play!