Product Overview

Build Your Own Ruby on Rails Web Applications

Table Of Contents

- Here’s a look at the table of contents:

0. Preface
   • Who Should Read this Book?
   • What you’ll Learn
   • What’s in this Book?
   • The Book’s Web Site
     • The Code Archive
     • Updates and Errata
   • The SitePoint Forums
   • The SitePoint Newsletters
   • Your Feedback
   • Acknowledgements
1. Introducing Ruby on Rails
   • History
   • Development Principles
     • Convention Over Configuration
     • Don’t Repeat Yourself
     • Agile Development
   • Building the Example Web Application
     • What is digg?
     • Features of the Example Application
   • Summary
2. Getting Started
   • What Does All this Cost?
   • Installing on Windows
   • Installing on Mac OS X
     • Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
     • Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) and Earlier
   • Installing on Linux
     • Using a Package Manager
     • Prerequisites
     • Installing Ruby on Linux
     • Installing RubyGems on Linux
     • Installing Rails on Linux
     • Installing MySQL on Linux
   • Building a Foundation
     • One Directory Structure to Rule them All
     • Creating the Standard Directory Structure
   • Starting our Application
   • Which Text Editor?
     • Windows Text Editors
     • Mac OS X Text Editors
     • Linux and Cross-platform Editors
   • Summary
3. Introducing Ruby
   • Ruby is a Scripting Language
     • Compiled Languages
     • Scripting Languages
     • The Great Performance Debate
   • Ruby is an Object Oriented Language
   • Reading and Writing Ruby Code
     • The Interactive Ruby Shell (irb)
     • Interacting with Ruby Objects
     • Punctuation in Ruby
   • Object Oriented Programming in Ruby
     • Classes and Objects
     • Object-level Functionality
     • Class-level Functionality
     • Inheritance
     • Return Values
   • Standard Output
   • Ruby Core Classes
     • Arrays
     • Hashes
     • Strings
     • Numerics
     • Symbols
     • nil
   • Running Ruby Files
   • Control Structures
     • Conditionals
     • Loops
     • Blocks
   • Summary
4. Rails Revealed
   • Three Environments
   • Database Configuration
     • The Database Configuration File
     • Creating the Databases
   • The Model-view-controller Architecture
     • MVC in Theory
     • MVC the Rails Way
     • ActiveRecord (the Model)
     • The ActionPack Module
   • Code Generation
   • ActionMailer
   • Testing and Debugging
     • Testing
     • Debugging
   • A GUI Tool for MySQL
   • Summary
5. Models, Views, and Controllers
   • Generating a Model
     • The Model Generator
     • Modifying the Schema Using Migrations
     • Managing Data Using the Rails Console
     • Where’s the SQL?
   • Generating a Controller
     • Running the generate Script
     • Understanding the Output
     • Starting our Application … Again
   • Creating a View
     • Generating Views with Scaffolding
     • Creating Static Pages
     • Creating Dynamic Pages
     • Passing Data Back and Forth
     • Pulling in a Model
   • Summary
6. Helpers, Forms, and Layouts
   • Calling Upon our Trusty Helpers
   • Story Submission
     • Creating a Form
     • Saving Data to the Database
     • Creating a Layout
     • User Feedback and the Flash
   • Testing the Form
     • Testing the Model
     • Testing the Controller
     • Revisiting the Logs
   • Summary
7. Ajax and Web 2.0
   • Generating a Vote Model
     • Creating the Model
     • Creating the Migration
     • Applying the Migration
   • An Introduction to Relationships
     • Introducing the has_many Clause
     • Introducing the belongs_to Clause
     • How’s our Schema Looking?
   • Clean URLs and Permalinks
     • Implementing Clean URLs
     • Adding Permalinks to Stories
     • Showing off our Stories
   • Ajax and Rails
     • What is Ajax?
     • Remote Scripting with Prototype
     • Visual Effects with script.aculo.us
     • Making Stories Shove-able
   • Introducing Partials
     • Adding Voting History
     • Creating the Partial
     • Styling the Voting History
     • Tweaking the Voting History
   • Testing the Voting Functionality
     • Testing the Model
     • Testing the Controller
     • Running the Full Test Suite
   • Summary
8. Protective Measures
   • Sessions and Cookies
     • Identifying Individual Users
     • What’s a Cookie?
     • What’s a Session?
     • Sessions in Rails
   • Modeling the User
     • Generating a User Model
     • Adding Relationships for the User Class
     • Creating a User
   • Developing Login Functionality
     • Creating the Controller
     • Creating the View
     • Adding Functionality to the Controller
   • Filters
     • Before Filters
     • After Filters
     • Around Filters
     • A Word on Filter Methods
   • Managing User Logins
     • Retrieving the Current User
     • Displaying the Name of the Current User
     • Allowing Users to Log Out
   • Adding a Navigation Menu
   • Restricting the Application
     • Protecting the Form
     • Restricting Access to Story Submission
     • Associating Stories with Users
   • Testing User Authentication
     • Testing the Model
     • Testing the Controllers
   • Summary
9. Advanced Topics
   • Promoting Popular Stories
     • Using a Counter Cache
     • Implementing the Front Page
     • Implementing the Voting Bin
     • Abstracting Presentation Logic
     • Requiring that Users Log In to Vote
     • Adding Story Attributes
   • Auto-generating Permalinks
     • Introducing Model Callbacks
     • Adding a Callback
   • Expanding the Submission Form
   • Adding User Pages
     • Introducing the Join Model Relationship
     • Introducing the has_many :through Association
     • Modifying the Controller
     • Creating the View
   • Testing the New Functionality
     • Testing the Model
     • Testing the StoryController
     • Testing the AccountController
     • Running the Complete Test Suite
   • Summary
10. Rails Plugins
    • What is a Plugin?
    • Adding Tagging to Shovell
      • Introducing the acts_as_taggable Plugin
      • Enabling Tag Submission
      • Enabling Tag Display
      • Assigning our First Tags
      • Viewing Stories by Tag
    • Testing the Tagging Functionality
      • Testing the Model
      • Testing the Controller
      • Running the Test Suite ... Again!
    • Summary
11. Debugging, Testing, and Benchmarking
    • Debugging your Application
      • Debugging within Templates
      • Debugging Using Breakpoints
      • Using the Rails Logging Tool
      • Overcoming Problems in Debugging
    • Testing your Application
      • Integration Tests
      • Using Breakpoints in a Test
      • Revisiting the Rails Console
    • Benchmarking your Application
      • Taking Benchmarks from Log Files
      • Manual Benchmarking
    • Summary
12. Deployment and Production Use
    • The Implications of “Production”
    • Choosing a Production Environment
      • Web Server Options
      • Back-end Options
    • Deploying Shovell
      • Step 1: Installing Mongrel
      • Step 2: Moving to the Production System
      • Step 3: Setting Up Apache
    • Alternatives for Session Storage
      • The ActiveRecord Store Session Container
      • The MemCached Store Session Container
    • Further Reading
      • Caching
      • Version Control and Deployment Management
      • Errors by Email
    • Summary
13. Index

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