ou don't have to know everything about a car to drive one, and you don't need to know everything about Ruby to start programming with it. Written for both experienced and new programmers alike, Learning Ruby is a just-get-in-and-drive book — a hands-on tutorial that offers lots of Ruby programs and lets you know how and why they work, just enough to get you rolling down the road.
Interest in Ruby stems from the popularity of Rails, the web development framework that's attracting new devotees and refugees from Java and PHP. But there are plenty of other uses for this versatile language. The best way to learn is to just try the code! You'll find examples on nearly every page of this book that you can imitate and hack.
Briefly, this book:

• Outlines many of the most important features of Ruby
• Demonstrates how to use conditionals, and how to manipulate strings in Ruby. Includes a section on regular expressions
• Describes how to use operators, basic math, functions from the Math module, rational numbers, etc.
• Talks you through Ruby arrays, and demonstrates hashes in detail
• Explains how to process files with Ruby
• Discusses Ruby classes and modules (mixins) in detail, including a brief introduction to object-oriented programming (OOP)
• Introduces processing XML, the Tk toolkit, RubyGems, reflection, RDoc, embedded Ruby, metaprogramming, exception handling, and other topics
• Acquaints you with some of the essentials of Rails, and includes a short Rails tutorial.

Each chapter concludes with a set of review questions, and appendices provide you with a glossary of terms related to Ruby programming, plus reference material from the book in one convenient location. If you want to take Ruby out for a drive, Learning Ruby holds the keys.

Ruby has set the world on fire, proving itself a serious challenger to Perl and Python in all spheres. In particular, more and more people are discovering that Ruby's flexibility, superb feature set, and gentle learning curve make it a natural choice for system administration tasks, from the humblest server to the largest enterprise deployment.

Within the pages of Practical Ruby for System Administration, you'll learn the Ruby way to construct files, tap into clouds of data, build domain-specific languages, perform network traffic analysis, and more.

Based on author André Ben Hamou's own experiences working as a system administrator, this book will help you pick up practical tips on Ruby coding style, learn how to analyze and improve script performance, and make use of no-nonsense advice on scripting workflow, including testing and documentation.

Above all, you'll come to appreciate the sheer power of Ruby and the hundreds of benefits it offers for system administration.

* This book places equal emphasis on fundamental Ruby concepts as well as practical how-tos.
* It uses examples from other languages to ease the transition to Ruby.
* The book is concise, entertaining, and informative–unlike many books aimed at system administrators, which can be overly long and stodgy.

Build and deploy a fully-featured Web 2.0 application using Ruby on Rails.
Learn best practice approaches to web application development.
Use Rails’s Ajax features to create slick interfaces.

Practical Ruby Gems is a comprehensive guide to utilizing and creating Ruby Gems–ready-made Ruby code modules that can be easily added to Ruby and Rails projects. This book is ideal for Ruby programmers as well as web developers who use Rails and wish to extend the functionality of their projects.

You'll get a prime selection of 34 of the best and most useful Gems, which makes up the core of this book. Each of these also comes complete with actual use cases and code examples that you can use immediately in your own projects. You'll learn how Ruby Gems can be used to

Andre Lewis, Michael Purvis, Jeffrey Sambells, Cameron Turner, "Beginning Google Maps Applications with Rails and Ajax: From Novice to Professional"

The Google Maps API remains one of the showcase examples of the Web 2.0 development paradigm. Beginning Google Maps Applications with Rails and Ajax: From Novice to Professional is the first book to comprehensively introduce the service from a developer perspective, showing you how you can integrate mapping features into your Rails-driven web applications.

Proceeding far beyond simplistic map display, you'll learn how to draw from a variety of data sources such as the U.S. Census Bureau's TIGER/Line data and Google's own geocoding feature to build comprehensive geocoding services for mapping many locations around the world.

Ruby is perhaps best known as the engine powering the hugely popular Ruby on Rails web framework. However, it is an extremely powerful and versatile programming language in its own right. It focuses on simplicity and offers a fully object-oriented environment.
Beginning Ruby 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.

In this book 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 what's 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

If you're a web designer or developer who thinks that the coding involved in developing dynamic web applications is too difficult, think again. This book, and the framework it covers, is the perfect solution to your needs. Ruby on Rails provides an easy-to-use method for quickly developing web applications, simplifying potentially complicated subjects such as web architecture, JavaScript, and SQL/database creation. The simplicity of Rails belies its power, though—this technology is used by major companies such as 37Signals and Google.

Ruby on Rails is the revolutionary online programming tool that makes creating functional e-commerce web sites faster and easier than ever. With the intuitive, straightforward nature of Ruby and the development platform provided by Rails, you can put together full-fledged web applications quickly, even if you're new to web programming.

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.

Are you a tester who spends more time manually creating complex test data than using it? A business analyst who seemingly went to college all those years so you can spend your days copying data from reports into spreadsheets? A programmer who can't finish each day's task without having to scan through version control system output, looking for the file you want?

If so, you're wasting that computer on your desk. Offload the drudgery to where it belongs, and free yourself to do what you should be doing: thinking. All you need is a scripting language (free!), this book (cheap!), and the dedication to work through the examples and exercises.

Everyday Scripting with Ruby is divided into four parts. In the first, you'll learn the basics of the Ruby scripting language. In the second, you'll see how to create scripts in a steady, controlled way using test-driven design. The third part is about finding, understanding, and using the work of others–and about preparing your scripts for others to use. The fourth part, more advanced, is about saving even more time by using application frameworks.

Use this free and easy programming language for e-commerce sites and blogs.
If you need to build Web and database applications quickly but you don’t dream in computer code, take heart! Ruby on Rails was created for you, and this book will have you up and running in no time. The Ruby scripting language and the Rails framework let you create full-featured Web applications fast. It’s even fun!

Discover how to

• Install and run Ruby and Rails
• Use the RadRails IDE
• Create a blog with Ruby
• Connect your Web site to a database
• Build a shopping cart
• Explore Ruby’s syntax