The Rails 4 Way, 3rd edition

The “Bible” for Rails Development: Now Fully Updated for Rails 4.1

"When I read The Rails Way for the first time, I felt like I truly understood Rails for the first time.”
—From the Foreword by Steve Klabnik

Ruby on Rails 4 is leaner, tighter, and even more valuable to professional web developers. More than ever, it helps you focus on what matters most: delivering business value via clean and maintainable code.

The Rails™ 4 Way is the only comprehensive, authoritative guide to delivering production-quality code with Rails 4. Kevin Faustino joins pioneering Rails developer Obie Fernandez to illuminate the entire Rails 4 API, including its most powerful and modern idioms, design approaches, and libraries. They present extensive new and updated content on security, performance, caching, Haml, RSpec, Ajax, the Asset Pipeline, and more.

Through detailed code examples, you’ll dive deep into the Rails 4 code base, discover why Rails is designed as it is, and learn how to make it do exactly what you want. Proven in dozens of production systems, this book’s techniques will maximize your productivity and help you build more successful solutions. You’ll want to keep this guide by your computer—you’ll refer to it constantly.

This guide will help you

Build powerful, scalable REST-compliant APIs
Program complex program flows using Action Controller
Represent models, relationships, CRUD operations, searches, validation, callbacks, and more
Smoothly evolve application database schema via Migrations
Apply advanced Active Record techniques: single-table inheritance, polymorphic models, and more
Create visual elements with Action View and partials
Optimize performance and scalability with view caching
Master the highly productive Haml HTML templating engine
Make the most of Rails’ approach to session management
Secure your systems with Rails 4’s improved authentication and authorization
Resist SQL Injection, XSS, XSRF, and other attacks
Extend Rails with popular gems and plugins, and learn to write your own
Integrate email services with Action Mailer
Use Ajax via Rails 4 support for unobtrusive JavaScript
Improve responsiveness with background processing
Leverage Asset Pipeline to simplify development, improve perceived performance, and reduce server burdens
Accelerate implementation and promote maintainability with RSpec