CSCI E-168

I’ve been paging through a new book, Practical Rails Projects, by Eldon Alameda, and so far, I’m pretty impressed.

Here are some of the highlights so far:

Chapters 2, 4, and 5: Creating an “interesting” app, leveraging a similar knowledge base to what you are learning in this course. Going through these chapters could lock in what you’ve learned. One thing I like here is that he uses the standard vocabulary of Rails, and doesn’t slow down a whole lot: It’s pretty lean.

Chapter 3: Adapting the acts_as_authenticated plugin to an existing app.

Chapter 6: Adding a REST (web services) interface. Good discussion of using the curl application to test it. Up-to-date account of authentication issues with REST and acts_as_authenticated

Chapter 7: Adding graphics: charts and (my favorite) sparklines.

Then it really gets interesting, as there is a whole chapter studying the code organization of Typo (best blogging software for Rails, though abandoned by many because WordPress is so dominant with its useful plugins, mindshare, etc.).

All that is just in the first third of the book. I will likely review this on my blog in a few weeks; stay tuned. [Amazon]