[...]... You’d think that producing a second edition of a book would be easy After all, you already have all the text It’s just a tweak to some code here and a minor wording change there, and you’re done You’d think It’s difficult to tell exactly, but my impression is that creating this second edition of Agile Web Development with Rails took about as much effort as the first edition Rails was constantly evolving... second edition basically a new book It seems strange to be releasing a second edition at a time when the first edition is still among the best-selling programming books in the world But Rails has changed, and we need to change this book with it Enjoy! Dave Thomas October 2006 Report erratum 13 Chapter 1 Introduction Ruby on Rails is a framework that makes it easier to develop, deploy, and maintain web. .. starting with half of a really good application already in place But there’s something else to Rails—something that’s hard to describe Somehow, it just feels right Of course you’ll have to take our word for that until you write some Rails applications for yourself (which should be in the next 45 minutes or so ) That’s what this book is all about 1.1 Rails Is Agile The title of this book is Agile Web Development. .. The title of this book is Agile Web Development with Rails You may be surprised to discover that we don’t have explicit sections on applying agile practices X, Y, and Z to Rails coding The reason is both simple and subtle Agility is part of the fabric of Rails Let’s look at the values expressed in the Agile Manifesto as a set of four preferences.1 Agile development favors the following • Individuals... Hansson, the creator of Rails, was named Hacker of the Year at OSCON Rails won a Jolt Award as best web development tool, and the first edition of this book received a Jolt Award as best technical book But the Rails core team didn’t just sit still, soaking up the praise Instead, they’ve been heads-down adding new features and facilities Rails 1.0, which came out some months after the first edition hit the streets,... everything Dave Thomas November 2006 dave@pragprog.com Agile Web Development with Rails I found it in our local bookstore and it seemed great!” —Dave’s Mum Report erratum 20 Part I Getting Started Chapter 2 The Architecture of Rails Applications One of the interesting features of Rails is that it imposes some fairly serious constraints on how you structure your web applications Surprisingly, these constraints... experimenting with architectures for web applications that mirrored the 20year-old ideas in MVC The results were frameworks such as WebObjects, Struts, and JavaServer Faces All are based (with varying degrees of fidelity) on the ideas of MVC Report erratum 23 M ODELS , V IEWS , AND C ONTROLLERS Routing http://my.url/store/add_to_cart/123 Routing finds Store controller Controller interacts with model Controller... Windows for development, you’re in luck, because Curt Hibbs has put together a bundle of everything you’ll need to get started with Rails InstantRails is a single download that contains Ruby, Rails, MySQL (version 4 at the time of writing), and all the gubbins needed to make them work together It even contains an Apache web server and the support code that lets you deploy high-performance web applications... new, and the core team of developers understand the new Web Rails isn’t playing catchup with the new de facto web standards: it’s helping define them And Rails Report erratum 15 R AILS I S A GILE makes it easy for developers to integrate features such as AJAX and RESTful interfaces into their code: support is built in (And if you’re not familar with AJAX and REST interfaces, never fear—we’ll explain... along with support for test fixtures and stubs during testing, gives developers the safety net they need when making those changes With a good set of tests in place, changes are less nerve-wracking Rather than constantly trying to tie Rails processes to the agile principles, we’ve decided to let the framework speak for itself As you read through the tutorial chapters, try to imagine yourself developing web . exactly, but my impression is that creating this second edition of Agile Web Development with Rails took about as much effort as the first edition. Rails was constantly evolving and, as it did,. about. 1.1 Rails Is Agile The title of this book is A g ile Web Development with Rails. You may be sur- prised to discover that we don’t have explicit sections on applying agile prac- tices X,. our web site is not an official release, and should not be used in production applications. Dave Thomas Agil e Web Develo pment with Rails Second Edition Dave Thomas David Heinemeier Hansson with Leon