Getting started with Ruby on Rails

More people keep me asking about how to get started with Rails. Here is my suggestion:

  • Installation
      • If you do not have Ruby installed, either get it from http://www.ruby-lang.org , or use the package management system of your distribution.
      • Install RubyGems:download it from http://rubygems.rubyforge.org, unpack and install with
        sudo ruby setup.rb
      • Install rails:
        sudo gem install rails --include-dependencies
  • The tutorials
    • Probably the simplest thing after you have installed Rails is to start with Four Days On Rails. It is a simple and practical guide to get a quick overview of the possibilities of Rails, illustrated through building a real-life application.
    • Another very good inroduction is Curtis Hibb’s Rolling with Ruby on Rails. It is more detailed than the first tutorial, also includes a full installation guide (for Win32). Part 2 can be found here, and Ajax on Rails is the third part dealing with (surprise!) Ajax in Rails.
    • Amy Hoy has another nice introduction here.
  • Books
    • The bible of Rails development is definitely the Jolt-award winner Agile Development with Rails. If you would like to do more serious Rails development than just write some simple applications after reading the tutorials, i definitely recommend you to buy this book. The tutorials are very good to get the idea of what is RoR about, but they can not substitute the book.
    • There are more interesting books out there, like Rails Recipes or Ruby for Rails but to get you started, the above mentioned book should be enough. If you want more, be sure to check out these as well.

3 thoughts on “Getting started with Ruby on Rails

  1. You picked a good topic for this post and you wrote about it well. I have seen several other internet sites with comparable content but no 1 has carried out a better job than you on writing about it.

  2. Thanks, thats very useful stuff to know! I admit to being a bit of a failure in the kitchen, but I’m trying my best to learn. Admitting is the first step to recovery right!!? I promised to cook something for my wife this weekend for the first time – very exciting! I found some really simple recipe at this site, seems to be designed exactly for people like me, which is perfect! Anyway, thanks, I’ll be sure to subscribe to this site to read more later.

  3. options are used as HTML5 attributes so that when the link is clicked, Rails will first show a confirm dialog to the user, and then submit the link with method

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