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Learning Rails 3--New from O'Reilly Media

Sebastopol, CA—If you're a web developer or designer ready to learn Rails, Learning Rails 3 (O'Reilly Media, $34.99 USD) is the ideal way to start. "The process of learning Rails can feel like a moving target," says coauthor Eric Gruber (@ericjgruber). "The framework is constantly evolving and continually maturing. Learning Rails 3 is a major rewrite from the previous edition, walking the reader through the many incredible changes to this popular web development tool."

Rather than throw you into the middle of the framework's Model-View-Controller architecture, Learning Rails 3 works from the outside in. You'll begin with the foundations of the Web you already know, and learn how to create something visible with Rails' view layer. Then you'll tackle the more difficult inner layers: the database models and controller code.

"Learning Rails 3 is a great fit for that developer who is a little familiar with Rails, or is at least curious, and wants to take his or her skill set a little deeper," Gruber explains. "Increasingly, a designer will need to know more about development, and Learning Rails 3 is a great fit for anyone looking to broaden his or her horizons."

With this book, you will learn to:

• Present content by building an application with a basic view and a simple controller
• Build forms and process their results, progressing from simple to more complex
• Connect forms to models by setting up a database, and create code that maps to database structures
• Use Rails scaffolding to build applications from a view-centric perspective
• Add common web application elements such as sessions, cookies, and authentication
• Build applications that combine data from multiple tables
• Send and receive email messages from your applications

"Learning Rails 3 feels like a brisk pair programming session with professionals who know how to use Ruby on Rails to get things done, and get them done well."
—Alan Harris, author of Sinatra: Up and Running