Rails 3 in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference [Paperback]

Kick your web development skills into high gear by learning to build effective database-driven websites with Rails 3. This handy book provides a concise yet thorough introduction to the framework, an overview of commands and configurations, and details on every Rails component -- all in an easy-to-use reference you can rely on every day.

Rails eliminates many of the problems common to other web application frameworks with its built-in components for data persistence, routing, templating, mailing, and more. Rails 3 in a Nutshell contains precisely what you need to know to build full-fledged applications that are light on code, highly scalable, and feature rich.

• Get started quickly by building example applications with Rails
• Create clean and maintainable applications with models, views, controllers, migrations, mail, and web services
• Jump-start your projects with built-in application generators
• Familiarize yourself with Rails components such as Active Record to connect business objects and database tables, and Active Resource for web services
• Write unit, functional, and integration tests, and use Rake to run them
• Learn about existing Rails plug-ins and find out how to write your own
• Take advantage of little-known and undocumented features

Cody Fauser is currently CTO of Ottawa based Shopify, the best e-commerce solution on the web. He is responsible for ensuring that Shopify is a robust, world-class platform for over 5,000 online businesses.

Cody is the lead author of Rails in a Nutshell, and contributed to Advanced Rails Recipes. He also wrote RJS Templates for Rails and the PeepCode ActiveMerchant PDF. Cody enjoys participating in Open Source projects and is the sole maintainer of ActiveMerchant, the most popular payment processing library for Ruby.

Cody currently lives in Buenos Aires with his wife Maria and son Sim n. You can check out his blog at http://www.codyfauser.com and follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/codyfauser.

James MacAulay has been working with Ruby and Rails since 2006 and has authored and contributed to numerous open source projects along the way. Most of that time has been spent working at Shopify, where he continues to help create better experiences for online merchants and their customers. In addition to his work in software development, James has studied fields as diverse as cognitive science and traditional hand-drawn animation. He currently resides in Ottawa, Canada.

Edward Ocampo-Gooding has been working professionally with Rails since 2006, starting with a gig he found while reminiscing about Ruby in a university bar. Since then, he’s worked on a TechCrunch-lauded startup, consulted for the LA Times, and toiled away on a variety of other startups where he found the friends with whom he continues to work with today.

Edward lives in Ottawa, working at Shopify during the day and leading the charge for Open Data at night.

John Guenin has been developing software professionally in one form or another for the past 10 years. During the last four, he's cultivated a deep love of Ruby and Rails. He's also spent his fair share of time working with C, C++, .Net/C#, Cocoa/Objective-C, SQL, and Javascript--which have inspired a wide range of emotions in their own right. In early 2008 he gave up his fancy "Senior Ruby/Rails Developer" title at a financial company to explore life as a freelancer, which has kept him inspired with a wide range of projects.

When not playing with computers, John enjoys geeking out with cognitive science, especially in the areas of attention and learning.