A Review of ‘The Rails 3 Way’ by Obie Fernandez

A Review of ‘The Rails 3 Way’ by Obie Fernandez

The Rails 3 Way is the much awaited, Rails 3-focused followup to The Rails Way, a popular Rails book (and, dare I say, bible) by Obie Fernandez. It features forewords by David Heinemeier Hansson and Yehuda Katz and checks in at a desk-thumping 759 pages of full-on Rails 3 goodness (despite the book sites claiming 850 pages). I've given it the once-over.

My General Conclusion

The Rails 3 Way is an interesting book representing a large amount of effort digging into Rails 3. It shares insights and technical knowledge you'd struggle to patch together from blog posts and documentation. It's a very opinionated book and will not be to everyone's taste. For starters, ERb isn't covered at all, instance variables in views are scowled at, and Test::Unit is treated with contempt.

It's not an introductory book in any sense and Obie acknowledges this in his introduction (Rails newbies need Michael Hartl's awesome Rails Tutorial Book and Screencasts). Obie bills it as a "day-to-day reference for the full-time Rails developer" - a fair description IMHO. The book feels disjointed in places and has a scattershot approach to what it cares to cover. You need to be clued up to digest this book properly and I discuss these feelings more at the end of this post.

For an intermediate to expert Rails developer (especially one yet to move to Rails 3) or an expert Rubyist new to Rails The Rails 3 Way is a useful book that unearths some of the trickier parts of Rails 3 that a professional needs to know about. I recommend it - but not as wholeheartedly as the original edition for a number of reasons covered later in this post.

Who Should Buy It?

Existing Rails 3 experts (to use as a reference and "refresher")
Rails 1. x and 2. x gurus who haven't yet made a serious effort with Rails 3 (as you'll know what parts are useful to you or not)
Confident Rubyists with an interest in Rails 3 (ditto)
People prepared to use the book as part of a wider library of Rails 3 books as the author intended
Who Shouldn't Buy it?

Anyone who doubts their confidence with Ruby and is unable to work around the book's flaws
Total newcomers to Ruby and Rails
People expecting an exhaustive reference to Rails 3
How to Buy The Rails 3 Way

The Rails 3 Way is currently available on Amazon in paperback form ($31.49 at time of writing) and on the Kindle ($36.80), as well as in a PDF form ($35.99) on InformIT. You can also read it at no extra charge on Safari Books Online if you're a member (I recommend it - a great service and they even have an iPad app to read 1000s of tech books now).

The Book's Structure

To give you a taster, the main chapters are:

Rails Environments and Configuration
Routing
REST, Resources, and Rails
Working with Controllers
Working with Active Record
Active Record Migrations
Active Record Associations
Validations
Advanced Active Record
Action View
All About Helpers
Ajax on Rails
Session Management
Authentication
XML and Active Resource
Action Mailer
Caching and Performance
RSpec
Extending Rails with Plugins
Background Processing
The Criticism

As much as I recommend this book for its provenance, its uniqueness, and because, well, Obie is just a damn nice guy, a review is not a review without some insightful criticism. Sadly, I have some.

Those Strong Opinions

On Twitter, Obie Fernandez noted that The Rails 3 Way is "purposely opinionated and not an introductory book."