Books
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Here are some Rails-related books that I recommend for your reading and learning pleasure.
Agile Web Development with Rails, Third Edition
“The Rails Bible”
If you prefer learning/reading/practicing/doing from a book than online, the first book I’d recommend is obviously the one that David Heinemeier Hansson (creator of Rails) wrote himself, Agile Web Development with Rails. Note that this book is excellent if you’re already a bit familiar with the Ruby programming language, or if you can follow the Ruby examples quickly (I hope so, since in my opinion Ruby is one of the easiest programming languages to learn). If you need help in Ruby, though, you may want to read one of the Ruby programming language tutorials (in Rails-related Resources section above, or the Ruby books below), or get the Rails book for you that wants to learn Ruby and Rails from scratch, Ruby on Rails Up and Running (see more below).
The third edition of this book is available, you should get it rather than the earlier editions. The reason is pretty understandable: the Rails project is going in a very rapid pace, and there are cool new features in the newer Rails versions (2.x) that weren’t available at the time the earlier editions of the book was written. Don’t worry though, there are still plenty of documentation and samples on the Rails API documentation, the Rails wiki, and other places, to look for information about any upcoming new features.
Beginning Ruby: From Novice to Professional
Beginning Ruby by Peter Cooper is a thoroughly contemporary guide for every type of reader wanting to learn Ruby, from novice programmers to web developers to Ruby newcomers. It starts by explaining the principles behind object-oriented programming and within a few chapters builds toward creating a genuine Ruby application.
The book then explains key Ruby principles, such as classes and objects; projects, modules, and libraries; and other aspects of Ruby such as database access. In addition, Ruby on Rails is covered in depth, and the book’s appendixes provide essential reference information as well as a primer for experienced programmers.
Read more on my review of Beginning Ruby: From Novice to Professional.
Rails Recipes
“Advanced Book for All Rails App Developers”
If you want another Rails book, Rails Recipes is definitely the one. It contains literally tons of practical tips and techniques for building any Rails web site. This book surely saves a lot of headaches and time for many developers using Rails. I highly recommend it as the second Rails book in your bookshelf.
Ruby on Rails: Up and Running
“Easier to Follow”
Although I’d prefer Agile Web Development with Rails, that book and this one have slightly different target markets. Ruby on Rails: Up and Running is more targeted at people who has no or little previous experience in the Ruby programming language. If you want to learn computer programming, Ruby, and Rails at the same time, this is the book that you’d want to have. After finishing this, I recommend you to get the Rails Recipes book (it contains a lot of useful AND cool tips, tricks, and techniques) and (optionally, I guess) Agile Web Development with Rails if you want deeper knowledge regarding Rails.
Beginning Ruby on Rails E-Commerce
This is easily one of the few (or the first?) Rails books who is able to broadly cover most aspects of Rails web development. Christian Hellsten and Jarkko Laine, the authors, will guide you from the point of installing the necessary software (including the Ubuntu Linux operating system), preparing the Scrum development process, to the very end of deployment and performance tuning. I say this book a “full-stack” since there’s not just development in here, but lots of bits about systems administration and project management.
The book covers the widest aspects of web site development than most books, and I’d heartily recommend it to anyone who wants to build a real world Rails web site, not just e-commerce builders.
This is a summary review. A full review of this book is also available.
Ruby for Rails – Ruby Techniques for Rails Developers
“Advanced Ruby Programming”
This book contains tips, tricks, and techniques in the Ruby programming language that are useful to, but not limited to, developing web applications with Rails. You definitely can apply 99% of the tips/tricks here to any Ruby project. After reading a few pages of this book you’ll realize how wonderful Ruby is, and you’ll start to understand how Rails achieves all its magic. Ruby provides all the tools to enable the magic, and Rails makes them happen (and YOU can too!!! For FREE, hehe.. just kidding! But seriously, Ruby & Rails are both FREE, and will forever continue to be that way). You’ll also be able to understand more about Rails internals, which is almost mandatory if you want to write your own Rails plugins, components, and/or engines (I’ll write about them later someday, especially Rails Engines since it’s one of the most powerful Rails plugins ever).
Pragmatic Ajax – A Web 2.0 Primer
“If you want to build an impressive web application, you’ll want this, badly”
I really don’t know why I bring this book here, it’s soo off-topic (I do remember this post is about “Getting Started with Rails”). It’s just that building Web 2.0-ish applications is very easy using Rails, you’ll only appreciate it if you’ve ever done it before in another server-side programming language, possibly using JavaScript and XmlHttpRequest directly (believe me, I did).
In case you wonder, Ajax (the link points to somewhat historical site) is informally known (although commonly accepted) as “Asynchronous JavaScript and Xml[HttpRequest]“. It’s somewhat a shorthand for referring to “rich, interactive web applications that doesn’t blindly refresh each page everytime you make a change”. Really, all that intricate, complex Ajax programming is just to prevent noticeable page refreshes (weird huh? you can create Google Maps-ish site in pure HTML without any JavaScript, I just don’t know how patient your users would be 
. Web 2.0 kinda’ adds to this by using technologies such as social networks, RSS feeds, and decentralized services, to provide even better user experience.
I definitely will review this book more in the future, since this is a blog about Web 2.0 anyway. As a side note, this book is not a Rails book (although it does mention Rails inside). It’s highly relevant to Rails though, because, some features that you’d use in Rails without knowing how it works (like the functions that use the Prototype and Scriptaculous library), actually use Ajax techniques that are described in this book. Having this book by your side is not mandatory when you’re just starting to develop a Rails web application, but it sure is handy when you want to build a catchy, interactive, rich, cool web site with bells and whistles. (not really, a shorter way to put it would be “truly dynamic web sites”)
The Ruby Way, Second Edition
Read my complete review of The Ruby Way. Here’s a snippet:
Since I read Rails Recipes first, I’d say this book works almost like that book, only this one is for the Ruby language, not for Rails (and the first edition doesn’t contain any reference to Rails whatsoever, if only for the sole fact that Rails didn’t exist yet.) Instead of a narrated tutorial about Ruby from beginning to release, the book has somewhat a HowTo format. There are nine chapters, the first chapter almost looks like an introduction to Ruby. The other chapters jump right into the tasks that a typical programmer would want to do, from basic stuff like data structure manipulation, to GUI, network programming, and threading techniques. Several appendixes guide you migrating from Python and Perl… although I’d prefer if the author also writes another appendix for PHP. (I think this is reasonable, because, I’d say that Ruby on Rails is much more popular than Ruby itself, and it’s a direct alternative to the PHP platform)
Rails Solutions: Ruby on Rails Made Easy
In Rails Solutions: Ruby on Rails Made Easy you’ll learn:
- How to develop web applications quickly and easily with the Ruby on Rails framework
- The basics of programming principles and Ruby syntax, so you can begin to understand whats going on under the hood
- How to implement must-have web application features, such as user accounts, data validation, sending e-mail, image uploading, and more
- How to use Ajax techniques with Rails and when not to use them
- How to implement other Web 2.0 features in Rails, such as tag clouds and microformats
You’ve built web sites that can be used by humans. But can you also build web sites that are usable by machines? That’s where the future lies, and that’s what RESTful Web Services shows you how to do. The World Wide Web is the most popular distributed application in history, and Web services and mashups have turned it into a powerful distributed computing platform. But today’s web service technologies have lost sight of the simplicity that made the Web successful. They don’t work like the Web, and they’re missing out on its advantages.
More Books?
I definitely will review more books as time (and money) allows. If you have a request please let me know. If you have a review and want to put your review here, you’re also more than welcome.