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I read on amazon.com a review of sitepoint's rails book by a folk that says that it is not true that the book is for rails 1.2 but for rails 1.1.6. He looked at the router component code of rails from the sitepoint's archive code and he says that there aren't techniques for rails 1.2. Is that true?
No, it's not true. The book does cover Rails 1.2 it just doesn't delve into the RESTful style of development that was introduced in Rails 1.2 - given that it is a beginners book I see no problem with this and a lot of Amazon reviewers tend to criticise a book for not being what they expected rather than on its own merits.
The books page says:
I'd expect a book claiming to be about Rails 1.2 to (at least) touch REST, because the REST support is by far the most important addition to Rails 1.2. I think it's safe to say that it's the standard development style now.The book uses Rails 1.2 — the very latest version of Rails — so you can take advantage of all of the latest features of the framework. -- http://www.sitepoint.com/books/
REST, and general HTTP appreciation, is the star of Rails 1.2. -- http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2007/1...8-celebrations
what is it? is it so important?why it isn't in the book?Originally Posted by Fenrir2
Anyway i found sitepoint's rails book a lot more useful and clear than the over-estimated agile book. That book is always cited in the official rails website like it was the official reccomended book. I really don't like it.
Hi Skyblaze,
As Luke said, it is a beginners book...
RoR is a huge library of code which contains an enourmous amount of documentation ( which is why it is described as 'Full Stack' ). No book can cover every aspect of the Framework.
( Have you looked at the api ? http://api.rubyonrails.org/ )
See if this definition helps you with rest:
REST:
It allows you to build full-featured and extensible web services and applications on top of a small set of core, foundational operations. These operations are the standard HTTP request methods (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE), of which you may only have experience with GET and POST. Web development has long ignored the full HTTP specification and has piled undue responsibility on the GET and POST methods, forcing them to shoulder the full load of requesting and sending data to and from dynamic web applications. But these request methods, these verbs, are the core of a very simple but expressive design methodology.
( This is the definition from 'Rails Cookbook' by Rob Orsini
Cheers - Dave Porter
ok so it is an advanced argument to study after the sitepoint's book right?
ok so it is an advanced argument to study after the sitepoint's book right?
Sure - walk before you run
Dave
It's very simple and easy to use. You write the usual crud controllers. Then you put
in your routes.rb. This defines cleaner urls:Code:map.resources :the_controller
And you can use:Code:old url => new url -- HTTP verb ------------------------------------- posts/create => posts -- POST posts/view/2 => posts/2 -- GET posts/update/2 => posts/2 -- PUT posts/destroy/2 => posts/2 -- DELETE
You have to use one controller per resource: one posts controller and one comments controller, not posts/comments combined into one controller. This is the REST development style.Code:link_to post_url(@post) link_to posts_url vs link_to :controller => 'posts', :action => 'view', :id => @post link_to :controller => 'posts', :action => 'list'
I disagree. There are still many people who are yet to jump on the REST bandwagon either by choice or lack of time. I don't think simplying touching on REST would provide any benefit. There are probably people reading the book who have never heard of REST. Not only would you have to spend time talking about Rails and REST, but the actual theory too. I think it is better ommitted.
Just because it was a major feature of 1.2 its by no means obligatory.
Well DHH who created Rails was the co-author of the Agile book so I guess you could say it is the "official" book.
> I'd expect a book claiming to be about Rails 1.2 to (at least) touch REST,...
Beginners or not the book is more than slightly misleading; If the book covers an earlier version than the one stated on the cover, regardless of what the version changelog says, it's misleading nonetheless.
Now, I'm not a particular Ruby fan and the event doesn't effect me in any way, but I have to ask why has something like this slip past Sitepoint? It's just not like them...
Honestly, some people aye?
> Just because it was a major feature of 1.2 its by no means obligatory.
Well, some people may buy the book based only on this fact; That the book covers the latest major release but in fact... Lacks coverage of some parts?
that book covers rest?
It does. I don't own the second edition, but I know it has a few pages or a chapter about REST.
did you like that book? I started reading it but when i first saw that for the first model it created a scaffold CRUD interface and worked on it instead to develop it from scratch (like sitepoint's book) i thinked that it wasn't so helpful.
It does have some useful parts (especially after the shopping cart tutorial), but I found online information more useful when learning Rails, especially the how-to parts of the Rails wiki.
anyway i think sitepoint's book is really great for the basics in ror programming....once you've got the basics from a good introductory book it is easy to find and understand advanced concepts and tutorials for yourself from internet. A book that has everything about ror is also useless in my opinion as a starting point 'cause you initially don't use all the features and the tecnology change very fast.
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