You will find a thorough introduction to both Ruby and Rails in this book. You'll get the easy instructions for acquiring and installing both; understand the nature of conditionals, loops, methods, and blocks; and become familiar with Ruby's classes and objects. You'll learn to build Rails applications, connect to databases, perform necessary testing, and put the whole thing together to create real-world applications such as shopping carts and online catalogs—apps you can actually use right away.

What you will learn from this book

• How to install and use Ruby and Rails
• Object-oriented programming with Ruby
• Rails fundamentals and how to create basic online applications
• How to work with HTML controls, use models in Rails applications, and work with sessions
• Details on working with databases and creating, editing, and deleting database records
• Methods for handling cookies and filters and for caching pages
• How to connect Rails with Ajax

Who this book is for

This book is for anyone who wants to develop online applications using Ruby and Rails. A basic understanding of programming is helpful; some knowledge of HTML is necessary.

Wrox Beginning guides are crafted to make learning programming languages and technologies easier than you think, providing a structured, tutorial format that will guide you through all the techniques involved.