The definitive, Jolt-award winning guide to learning and using Rails is now in its Second Edition. Rails is a new approach to web-based application development that enables developers to create full-featured, sophisticated web-based applications using less code and less effort. Now programmers can get the job done right and still leave work on time.

NEW IN THE SECOND EDITION: The book has been updated to take advantage of all the new Rails 1.2 features. The sample application uses migrations, Ajax, features a REST interface, and illustrates new Rails features. There are new chapters on migrations, active support, active record, and action controller (including the new resources-based routing). The Web 2.0 and Deployment chapters have been completely rewritten to reflect the latest thinking. Now you can learn which environments are best for your style application, and see how Capistrano makes managing your site simple. All the remaining chapters have been extensively updated. Finally, hundreds of comments from readers of the first edition have been incorporated, making this book simply the best available.

Rails is a full-stack, open source web framework that enables you to create full-featured, sophisticated web-based applications with a twist...you can create a full Rails application using less code than the setup XML you'd need just to configure some other frameworks.

With this book, you'll learn how to use Rails Active Record to connect business objects and database tables. No more painful object-relational mapping. Just create your business objects and let Rails do the rest. You'll learn how to use the Action Pack framework to route incoming requests and render pages using easy-to-write templates and components. See how to exploit the Rails service frameworks to send emails, talk to web services, and interact dynamically with JavaScript applications running in the browser (the "Ajax" architecture).

You'll see how easy it is to deploy Rails. You'll be writing applications that work with your favorite database (MySQL, Oracle, Postgres, and more) in no time at all.

You can buy this second edition half price ($19.95) from publisher at

http://www.pragprog.com/titles/rails2/agile-web-development-with-rails

You can also get the third edition in PDF with hard copy to follow for 53.95 at

http://www.pragprog.com/titles/rails3/agile-web-development-with-rails-third-edition

The publisher says that the release date for the third edition is March 15, 2009.

OK, I'm coming to rails late. I've played with Ruby on and off for about a year. I though it was a bit of a "kitchen sink" language until I got a good kick in the head by Neil Ford.

So this week I picked up this book (version 2) and I started reading it. It is, as far as technical books go, a page turner.

It gives a basic overview and the walks through an example as a tutorial.

I recommend you learn a little Ruby first (not necessary but makes working through the examples more focused on Rails rather than Ruby and Rails).

If you want to learn about Ruby on Rails and get an idea of what web development should be, read this book. THEN, the next time you need to start working on a site for a customer, sit down with them and start developing the site in real-time.

If they don't like Ruby, call it an "executable requirements description". Eventually, they might even think that the solution is good as is. If not, you still have a better explanation of where to go.

After Rails, I'm going back to RSpec and story tests and examine the maturity of developing a Ruby solution using TDD. I'm pretty sure it's already being done, so I just need to get on that learning curve.

This is a GREAT book. Get it, read it, TYPE in the examples - ok maybe download the CSS's and the style-sheet.

WARNING: the material related to OS X installation is a bit out of date. Use macports and install mysql, rb-mysql, rails, ruby (and I'm probably forgetting something), change your path to point to where that stuff got installed (probably /opt/local/bin/) and you'll be good to go - once you get mysql setup. There are some chicken scratchings here: http://schuchert.wikispaces.com/Ruby.RailsConfiguration.OSX, or do a google search. It'll be October 2008 before I actually put up good details, but it'll happen.

This is THE book for Rails. Top notch...only WAIT to buy it. As others have said, there is a new edition coming out soon that covers Rails 2.0. Of course...if you can't wait, go to the publisher's web page. They are selling copies of this edition for 50% off, while supplies last. But, some of the code in this book will not work anymore in Rails 2.0. Still, a great book and well worth it even for a quick introduction to the Rails world while you wait for the new edition. Once it's updated, though, for sure, GO FOR IT!

Not only is there a great framework to this textbook will introduce you to, but this is written in the perfect balance of interesting style and serious technical content along with compelling example that I've ever seen in any book. I give this book my very highest recommendation and I give the rails framework five stars as well for being an excellent easy to use and very functional framework.

This book seems to cover everything that I'm interested in and is able to adapt to different levels of knowledge that I'm able to arrive at in programming in Ruby language. The book does not insult the reader and while it challenges the reader doesn't over challenge or overwhelm any point. I can only recommend it for my particular demographic of rails newbies, but I think this book will work very well for anyone else who might be more familiar with Ruby and the rails framework.

This book is a great intro to Rails, very readable and easy to understand. It also seems fairly comprehensive. The only downside to this book is that it's not Rails 2.0, so a number of the examples are outdated or don't work with the latest versions of Rails (there were significant changes). I was taking a class in Ruby on Rails, and since we were using Rails 2.0, we had to get "The Rails Way" which covers Rails 2.0 but sucks in comparison to this book. "The Rails Way" is a good book for learning Rails if you already know Rails.