TUTORIALS
Once you’ve installed Rails it’s time to start coding. Here are a few starting points for you.
Beginner Tutorials
After you’ve installed Rails you should be ready to start developing applications. The following links are starting places for learning the foundations of Ruby, Rails and building your first apps.
- Try Ruby! – A simple interactive tutorial teaching you the basics of Ruby in 15 minutes.
- Ruby User’s Guide – Complete step by step guide for learning Ruby.
- Learning Ruby – Uses program examples to teach you the basics of Ruby. Draws parallels between other languages to show you what makes Ruby unique.
- Hackety Hack: the Coder’s Starter Kit – An interactive program designed to teach students how to program Ruby.
- Tutorial – This tutorial walks you through building your first Rails app.
- Using Ruby on Rails for Web Development on Mac OS X – Apple’s guide for developing your first Rails application.
- Learn Ruby on Rails: the Ultimate Beginner’s Tutorial – A solid Rails tutorial with a lot of explanation rather than just mindless code.
- A Many-to-Many tutorial for Rails – A walkthrough for building your first Rails app.
- Getting Your Feet Wet With Ruby on Rails – A beginner’s guide to taking advantage of Rails’ unique design. Includes information for creating the SQL database and scaffolding.
- Beginners Guide to Rails, part 1 – Shows you how to get your Rails database off the ground.
- Really Getting Started in Rails – Brief overview of the schematics of a Rails app.
- Basedex: Ruby on Rails – A massive glossary of Ruby on Rails links.
- How-tos – An extensive how-to library containing sample programs.
Advanced Rails Tutorials
Once you’ve mastered the beginner tutorials, check out this section for information on taking your Rails experience to the next level and building more dynamic applications.
- 19 Rails Tricks Most Rails Coders Don’t Know – Programmer Peter Cooper’s article containing various Rails hacks.
- Railscasts – Videos teaching you advanced Rails techniques.
- Ajax on Rails – A brief tutorial on adding Ajax to your applications.
- How to paginate, sort and search a table with Ajax and Rails – More information on the Ajax/Rails relationship.
- Ruby on Rails Caching Tutorial – Helping you to master the fine art of caching in Rails.
- How-to: Build a secured web application with Ruby on Rails – One of the most basic requirements with Rails is to have a secure Web application. Here is a breakdown for creating that secure environment.
- A complete turbogears spoliation: how-to build a wiki in 20 minutes (well I did not time it) – Since wikis are one of the hottest trends on the Web today, we figured you might want to see how to build one yourself.
- Agile RSS Aggregator in Ruby – A brief tutorial for developing a RSS aggregator.
BOOKS
Books are key items in every programmer’s arsenal. Unfortunately, books are often difficult to navigate, bulky and may not have all the pieces of information you’re looking for. Lucky for you, we’ve found several Ruby and Rails books online that have the information you need, making them excellent additions to your library.
- Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmer’s Guide – A complete reference for Ruby including sample program input and output.
- Why’s (poignant) guide to Ruby – A very casual and easy to read Ruby guide with comics and examples.
- Learn to Program – An excellent book for beginners; uses Ruby to teach the fundamentals of programming.
- Ruby on Rails Books – A group of 8 books that walk you through various Rails programs.
