The Rails 3 Way

According to the publisher, “The Rails 3 Way is the only comprehensive, authoritative guide to delivering production-quality code with Rails 3.” While it is debatable whether or not this is the “only” book that can live up to this claim, it is certainly a very useful book for any serious Rails 3 developer.

The book takes a systematic approach to using Rails 3. It begins with the necessary tasks of getting your Rails environment installed and configured and it then moves on to an in-depth discussion of fundamental features of Rails 3 such as controllers, Active Record and migrations. Later chapters describe specialist areas such as Ajax on Rails, session management and authentication. There are also some useful appendices providing Active Model and Active Support API reference guides.

This book is a good reference for moderately experienced Rails users. It is not a tutorial for complete beginners, nor does it explain how to program in Ruby. So if you are new to Ruby and Rails, this is not the book for you. But if you need a convenient reference to Rails 3, The Rails 3 Way would be a great choice.