How do you use it effectively? How do you harness the power? And, most important, how do you get high quality, real-world applications written?From the latest Ajax effects to time-saving automation tips for your development process, "Rails Recipes" will show you how the experts have already solved the problems you have.Use generators to automate repetitive coding tasks.Create sophisticated role-based authentication schemes.Add live search and live preview to your site.Run tests when anyone checks code in.How to create tagged data the right way.and many, many more...Owning "Rails Recipes" is like having the best Rails programmers sitting next to you while you code.

     Rails(TM) AntiPatterns identifies these widespread Rails code and design problems, explains why they're bad and why they happen--and shows exactly what to do instead.The book is organized into concise, modular chapters--each outlines a single common AntiPattern and offers detailed, cookbook-style code solutions that were previously difficult or impossible to find. Leading Rails developers Chad Pytel and Tammer Saleh also offer specific guidance for refactoring existing bad code or design to reflect sound object-oriented principles and established Rails best practices. With their help, developers, architects, and testers can dramatically improve new and existing applications, avoid future problems, and establish superior Rails coding standards throughout their organizations.This book will help you understand, avoid, and solve problems withModel layer code, from general object-oriented programming violations to complex SQL and excessive redundancy Domain modeling, including schema and database issues such as normalization and serialization View layer tools and conventions Controller-layer code, including RESTful code Service-related APIs, including timeouts, exceptions, backgrounding, and response codes Third-party code, including plug-ins and gems Testing, from test suites to test-driven development processes Scaling and deployment Database issues, including migrations and validations System design for "graceful degradation" in the real world

    Written for both experienced and new programmers alike, Learning Ruby is a just-get-in-and-drive book -- a hands-on tutorial that offers lots of Ruby programs and lets you know how and why they work, just enough to get you rolling down the road. Interest in Ruby stems from the popularity of Rails, the web development framework that's attracting new devotees and refugees from Java and PHP. But there are plenty of other uses for this versatile language. The best way to learn is to just try the code! You'll find examples on nearly every page of this book that you can imitate and hack. Briefly, this book:Outlines many of the most important features of Ruby Demonstrates how to use conditionals, and how to manipulate strings in Ruby. Includes a section on regular expressions Describes how to use operators, basic math, functions from the Math module, rational numbers, etc. Talks you through Ruby arrays, and demonstrates hashes in detail Explains how to process files with Ruby Discusses Ruby classes and modules (mixins) in detail, including a brief introduction to object-oriented programming (OOP) Introduces processing XML, the Tk toolkit, RubyGems, reflection, RDoc, embedded Ruby, metaprogramming, exception handling, and other topics Acquaints you with some of the essentials of Rails, and includes a short Rails tutorial. Each chapter concludes with a set of review questions, and appendices provide you with a glossary of terms related to Ruby programming, plus reference material from the book in one convenient location. If you want to take Ruby out for a drive, Learning Ruby holds the keys.

    Jon has done a wonderful job of updating the material. I am very impressed at how fresh the new examples seem." - Steve McConnell, author, Code CompleteWhen programmers list their favorite books, Jon Bentley's collection of programming pearls is commonly included among the classics. Just as natural pearls grow from grains of sand that irritate oysters, programming pearls have grown from real problems that have irritated real programmers. With origins beyond solid engineering, in the realm of insight and creativity, Bentley's pearls offer unique and clever solutions to those nagging problems. Illustrated by programs designed as much for fun as for instruction, the book is filled with lucid and witty descriptions of practical programming techniques and fundamental design principles. It is not at all surprising that Programming Pearls has been so highly valued by programmers at every level of experience. In this revision, the first in 14 years, Bentley has substantially updated his essays to reflect current programming methods and environments. In addition, there are three new essays on (1) testing, debugging, and timing; (2) set representations; and (3) string problems. All the original programs have been rewritten, and an equal amount of new code has been generated. Implementations of all the programs, in C or C++, are now available on the Web.What remains the same in this new edition is Bentley's focus on the hard core of programming problems and his delivery of workable solutions to those problems. Whether you are new to Bentley's classic or are revisiting his work for some fresh insight, this book is sure to make your own list of favorites.

    This practical "how-to" handbook, written by experienced programmer Hal Fulton, has been updated to not only explain the newest features of Ruby, but also to show how people use Ruby today, including coverage of Ruby on Rails.

    Today, Rails developers and architects need better ways to interface with legacy systems, move into the cloud, and scale to handle higher volumes and greater complexity. In Service-Oriented Design with Ruby and Rails Paul Dix introduces a powerful, services-based design approach geared toward overcoming all these challenges. Using Dix's techniques, readers can leverage the full benefits of both Ruby and Rails, while overcoming the difficulties of working with larger codebases and teams. Dix demonstrates how to integrate multiple components within an enterprise application stack; create services that can easily grow and connect; and design systems that are easier to maintain and upgrade. Key concepts are explained with detailed Ruby code built using open source libraries such as ActiveRecord, Sinatra, Nokogiri, and Typhoeus. The book concludes with coverage of security, scaling, messaging, and interfacing with third-party services. Service-Oriented Design with Ruby and Rails will help you Build highly scalable, Ruby-based service architectures that operate smoothly in the cloud or with legacy systems Scale Rails systems to handle more requests, larger development teams, and more complex code bases Master new best practices for designing and creating services in Ruby Use Ruby to glue together services written in any language Use Ruby libraries to build and consume RESTful Web services Use Ruby JSON parsers to quickly represent resources from HTTP services Write lightweight, well-designed API wrappers around internal or external services Discover powerful non-Rails frameworks that simplify Ruby service implementation Implement standards-based enterprise messaging with Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP) Optimize performance with load balancing and caching Provide for security and authentication

    When Ruby first burst onto the scene in the Western world, the Pragmatic Programmers were there with the definitive reference manual, Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmer's Guide.Now in its second edition, author Dave Thomas has expanded the famous Pickaxe book with over 200 pages of new content, covering all the improved language features of Ruby 1.8 and standard library modules. The Pickaxe contains four major sections:An acclaimed tutorial on using Ruby.The definitive reference to the language.Complete documentation on all built-in classes, modules, and methodsComplete descriptions of all 98 standard libraries.If you enjoyed the First Edition, you'll appreciate the expanded content, including enhanced coverage of installation, packaging, documenting Ruby source code, threading and synchronization, and enhancing Ruby's capabilities using C-language extensions. Programming for the World Wide Web is easy in Ruby, with new chapters on XML/RPC, SOAP, distributed Ruby, templating systems, and other web services. There's even a new chapter on unit testing.This is the definitive reference manual for Ruby, including a description of all the standard library modules, a complete reference to all built-in classes and modules (including more than 250 significant changes since the First Edition). Coverage of other features has grown tremendously, including details on how to harness the sophisticated capabilities of irb, so you can dynamically examine and experiment with your running code. Ruby is a wonderfully powerful and useful language, and whenever I'm working with it this book is at my side --Martin Fowler, Chief Scientist, ThoughtWorks

    "The Rails(TM) 3 Way"is the only comprehensive, authoritative guide to delivering production-quality code with Rails 3. Pioneering Rails expert Obie Fernandez and a team of leading experts illuminate the entire Rails 3 API, along with the idioms, design approaches, and libraries that make developing applications with Rails so powerful. Drawing on their unsurpassed experience and track record, they address the real challenges development teams face, showing how to use Rails 3 to maximize your productivity. Using numerous detailed code examples, the author systematically covers Rails 3 key capabilities and subsystems, making this book a reference that you will turn to again and again. He presents advanced Rails programming techniques that have been proven effective in day-to-day usage on dozens of production Rails systems and offers important insights into behavior-driven development and production considerations such as scalability. Dive deep into the Rails 3 codebase and discover why Rails is designed the way it is--and how to make it do what you want it to do.This book will help youLearn what's new in Rails 3 Increase your productivity as a web application developer Realize the overall joy in programming with Rails Leverage Rails' powerful capabilities for building REST-compliant APIs Drive implementation and protect long-term maintainability using RSpec Design and manipulate your domain layer using Active Record Understand and program complex program flows using Action Controller Master sophisticated URL routing concepts Use Ajax techniques via Rails 3 support for unobtrusive JavaScript Learn to extend Rails with popular gems and plugins, and how to write your own Extend Rails with the best third-party plug-ins and write your own Integrate email services into your applications with Action Mailer Improve application responsiveness with background processing Create your own non-Active Record domain classes using Active Model Master Rails' utility classes and extensions in Active Support

     -Byte, September 1995 I can't begin to tell you how many pleasurable hours of study and recreation they have afforded me! I have pored over them in cars, restaurants, at work, at home... and even at a Little League game when my son wasn't in the line-up. -Charles Long If you think you're a really good programmer... read [Knuth's] Art of Computer Programming... You should definitely send me a resume if you can read the whole thing. -Bill Gates It's always a pleasure when a problem is hard enough that you have to get the Knuths off the shelf. I find that merely opening one has a very useful terrorizing effect on computers. -Jonathan Laventhol This first volume in the series begins with basic programming concepts and techniques, then focuses more particularly on information structures-the representation of information inside a computer, the structural relationships between data elements and how to deal with them efficiently. Elementary applications are given to simulation, numerical methods, symbolic computing, software and system design. Dozens of simple and important algorithms and techniques have been added to those of the previous edition. The section on mathematical preliminaries has been extensively revised to match present trends in research. Ebook (PDF version) produced by Mathematical Sciences Publishers (MSP), http: //msp.org

    But if one per year is good, how about Seven Languages in Seven Weeks? In this book you'll get a hands-on tour of Clojure, Haskell, Io, Prolog, Scala, Erlang, and Ruby. Whether or not your favorite language is on that list, you'll broaden your perspective of programming by examining these languages side-by-side. You'll learn something new from each, and best of all, you'll learn how to learn a language quickly. Ruby, Io, Prolog, Scala, Erlang, Clojure, Haskell. With Seven Languages in Seven Weeks, by Bruce A. Tate, you'll go beyond the syntax-and beyond the 20-minute tutorial you'll find someplace online. This book has an audacious goal: to present a meaningful exploration of seven languages within a single book. Rather than serve as a complete reference or installation guide, Seven Languages hits what's essential and unique about each language. Moreover, this approach will help teach you how to grok new languages. For each language, you'll solve a nontrivial problem, using techniques that show off the language's most important features. As the book proceeds, you'll discover the strengths and weaknesses of the languages, while dissecting the process of learning languages quickly--for example, finding the typing and programming models, decision structures, and how you interact with them. Among this group of seven, you'll explore the most critical programming models of our time. Learn the dynamic typing that makes Ruby, Python, and Perl so flexible and compelling. Understand the underlying prototype system that's at the heart of JavaScript. See how pattern matching in Prolog shaped the development of Scala and Erlang. Discover how pure functional programming in Haskell is different from the Lisp family of languages, including Clojure. Explore the concurrency techniques that are quickly becoming the backbone of a new generation of Internet applications. Find out how to use Erlang's let-it-crash philosophy for building fault-tolerant systems. Understand the actor model that drives concurrency design in Io and Scala. Learn how Clojure uses versioning to solve some of the most difficult concurrency problems. It's all here, all in one place. Use the concepts from one language to find creative solutions in another-or discover a language that may become one of your favorites.

    Now you can get in on the action as well. This book describes metaprogramming as an essential component of Ruby. Once you understand the principles of Ruby, including the object model, scopes, and eigenclasses, you're on your way to applying metaprogramming both in your daily work and in your fun, after-hours projects. Learning metaprogramming doesn't have to be difficult or boring. By taking you on a Monday-through-Friday workweek adventure with a pair of programmers, Paolo Perrotta helps make mastering the art of metaprogramming both straightforward and entertaining. The book is packed with:Pragmatic examples of metaprogramming in action, many of which come straight from popular libraries or frameworks, such as Rails. Programming challenges that let you experiment and play with some of the most fun, "out-there" metaprogramming concepts. Metaprogramming spells--34 practical recipes and idioms that you can study and apply right now, to write code that is sure to impress. Whether you're a Ruby apprentice on the path to mastering the language or a Ruby wiz in search of new tips, this book is for you.

    This authoritative book scrapes away these bad features to reveal a subset of JavaScript that's more reliable, readable, and maintainable than the language as a whole--a subset you can use to create truly extensible and efficient code.Considered the JavaScript expert by many people in the development community, author Douglas Crockford identifies the abundance of good ideas that make JavaScript an outstanding object-oriented programming language-ideas such as functions, loose typing, dynamic objects, and an expressive object literal notation. Unfortunately, these good ideas are mixed in with bad and downright awful ideas, like a programming model based on global variables.When Java applets failed, JavaScript became the language of the Web by default, making its popularity almost completely independent of its qualities as a programming language. In JavaScript: The Good Parts, Crockford finally digs through the steaming pile of good intentions and blunders to give you a detailed look at all the genuinely elegant parts of JavaScript, including:SyntaxObjectsFunctionsInheritanceArraysRegular expressionsMethodsStyleBeautiful featuresThe real beauty? As you move ahead with the subset of JavaScript that this book presents, you'll also sidestep the need to unlearn all the bad parts. Of course, if you want to find out more about the bad parts and how to use them badly, simply consult any other JavaScript book.With JavaScript: The Good Parts, you'll discover a beautiful, elegant, lightweight and highly expressive language that lets you create effective code, whether you're managing object libraries or just trying to get Ajax to run fast. If you develop sites or applications for the Web, this book is an absolute must.

    It is the definitive reference guide, now in a second edition. Although the first edition was written in 1978, it continues to be a worldwide best-seller. This second edition brings the classic original up to date to include the ANSI standard. From the Preface: We have tried to retain the brevity of the first edition. C is not a big language, and it is not well served by a big book. We have improved the exposition of critical features, such as pointers, that are central to C programming. We have refined the original examples, and have added new examples in several chapters. For instance, the treatment of complicated declarations is augmented by programs that convert declarations into words and vice versa. As before, all examples have been tested directly from the text, which is in machine-readable form. As we said in the first preface to the first edition, C "wears well as one's experience with it grows." With a decade more experience, we still feel that way. We hope that this book will help you to learn C and use it well.

    That means you can't tap into the full power of Rails unless you master the Ruby language. ""Ruby for Rails,"" written by Ruby expert David Black (with a forward by David Heinemeier Hansson), helps Rails developers achieve Ruby mastery. Each chapter deepens your Ruby knowledge and shows you how it connects to Rails. You'll gain confidence working with objects and classes and learn how to leverage Ruby's elegant, expressive syntax for Rails application power. And you'll become a better Rails developer through a deep understanding of the design of Rails itself and how to take advantage of it.Newcomers to Ruby will find a Rails-oriented Ruby introduction that's easy to read and that includes dynamic programming techniques, an exploration of Ruby objects, classes, and data structures, and many neat examples of Ruby and Rails code in action. ""Ruby for Rails"": the Ruby guide for Rails developers!What's Inside Classes, modules, and objects Collection handling and filtering String and regular expression manipulation Exploration of the Rails source code Ruby dynamics Many more programming concepts and techniques!

    The first edition of this book, Programming Perl, hit the shelves in 1990, and was quickly adopted as the undisputed bible of the language. Since then, Perl has grown with the times, and so has this book.Programming Perl is not just a book about Perl. It is also a unique introduction to the language and its culture, as one might expect only from its authors. Larry Wall is the inventor of Perl, and provides a unique perspective on the evolution of Perl and its future direction. Tom Christiansen was one of the first champions of the language, and lives and breathes the complexities of Perl internals as few other mortals do. Jon Orwant is the editor of The Perl Journal, which has brought together the Perl community as a common forum for new developments in Perl.Any Perl book can show the syntax of Perl's functions, but only this one is a comprehensive guide to all the nooks and crannies of the language. Any Perl book can explain typeglobs, pseudohashes, and closures, but only this one shows how they really work. Any Perl book can say that my is faster than local, but only this one explains why. Any Perl book can have a title, but only this book is affectionately known by all Perl programmers as "The Camel."This third edition of Programming Perl has been expanded to cover version 5.6 of this maturing language. New topics include threading, the compiler, Unicode, and other new features that have been added since the previous edition.