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Book Review: The Rails Way, by Obie Fernandez

Ruby on Rails is one of the best-known open-source Web frameworks currently in use. It combines the Ruby language with an MVC (model-view-controller) architecture, a powerful object-relational mapper known as ActiveRecord

When Rails first became popular, online documentation was scarce, and the number of books on the market was limited. Two of the most popular books were published by the Pragmatic Programmers, once about Ruby and the other about Rails. Both books were good, and were even hailed as excellent by members of the community. I certainly enjoyed reading them, and consistently used the PDF version of the Rails book as an online reference.

But as often as I used the Rails book, I became more frustrated with it. The writing was good, and the examples were often interesting -- but information on a particular topic was often spread across different parts of the book, often with an introductory treatment in the initial "tutorial" section, followed by a more in-depth treatment in the later "reference" section. Perhaps this type of book is perfectly suited to some people -- but in my particular case, I wanted a Rails reference that gave in-depth treatment of subjects that I hadn't ever understood, such as routing, RESTful actions, the built-in helpers, and testing.

I'm happy to say that The Rails Way, a relatively new (but thick!) book by Rails personality Obie Fernandez, fulfilled my needs and expectations, and then some. In chapter after chapter, The Rails Way describes the ways in which different Rails subsystems work, and then ways in which we can customize, override, or make use of those systems for our own applications. The book is a healthy balance of reference material and code examples, showing us exactly how we can use various types of functionality.

I have seen numerous complimentary mentions of The Rails Way on Ruby-related blogs. This isn't a surprise: The writing is clear, the code examples good, and the Rails API up to date. The book is also full of highly practical advice, describing when one technique would be advantageous over another, and why.

Perhaps my biggest criticism of the book is the in-depth presentation of routes so early on. Routes are an important Rails feature, and they make it possible to create many types of interesting and useful URLs. But given that Rails comes with routes that understand basic controller/method/id URLs, I believe that this could have been relegated to the back of the book.

It's also important to realize that while The Rails Way is not necessarily an advanced book, it is designed as a reference, rather than as a tutorial. Beginning Rails programmers might want to consider getting a copy, but only in conjunction with a more introductory, tutorial volume.

I have been using this book as my own daily Rails reference since I received it several months ago, often preferring the printed book to the searchable PDFs. I suggest that you take a look; if my experience is any guide, you'll be quite happy that you did.

Do you know of any good Rails resources, online or off?

• Programming
• ruby on rails
• book review