You've heard about this amazing web framework called Ruby on Rails that's taken the world by storm, but thought it was way too complex for you? Think again.

Foundation Rails 2 takes you through your first steps in Rails, explaining in plain English how to start building dynamic web applications. And there's never been a better time to jump in to the Rails world, as the release of Rails 2 was a major evolutionary leap forward from previous versions.

Unlike other Rails books, this book doesn't throw you into the deep end right away in the hopes that you'll learn to swim. Instead, we'll start out with the basics and continually expand your knowledge until, by the end of the book, we're building a Rails application with dynamic features such as user registration, geocoding, filtering results with AJAX, RSS feeds, and an XML interface. Meanwhile, we'll talk about the important issues that other books often leave out such as testing your application's code, securing your application from hackers, optimizing your code for the best performance, and of course, deploying your application.

This book takes a focused approach to guiding you through understanding how the pieces of Rails work individually and how they fit together. Instead of emphasizing boring theoretical discussions, Foundation Rails 2 lets you get your hands dirty with the framework and learn the hows and whys of Rails faster than ever.

We start with a tour of what makes Rails special and why you need to learn it, move into a gentle introduction to the high points of programming in Ruby, and then take a tour of a sample Rails application. Next, we dig deeper into the core components of Rails before building a complete Rails application together. By the end of this book, not only will you know how to build Rails applications but you'll understand the reasons behind what you do.

The best way to learn Rails is by creating a variety of applications with it.

You already know the basics of Rails, and you're familiar with the exciting features and benefits associated with using this Rubybased framework. You're now at the point where you need to gain firsthand experience with Rails by thoroughly exploring the features and building several different types of web applications.

Eldon Alameda takes a focused approach to guiding you through the creation of multiple real-world examples that are designed to get your hands dirty with the core features of Rails, while providing you with the valuable experience of creating real Rails applications.

Projects you'll work on include creating a simple blog with an external API, constructing a workout tracker with a RESTful interface and graphs, and converting an existing PHP site to Rails while adding an advanced JavaScript interface. As an added bonus, the final project makes use of the edge version of Rails as you build an application that utilizes Active Resource, which provides an opportunity to explore the various changes and features that will be included with Rails 2.0. Each project is designed to provide you with the necessary information and tools to give you a running start at solving that problem yourself, and each project includes a number of additional ideas and exercises for ways that you can extend each application to fit your own needs. What you'll learn Implementing caching options Developing applications the RESTful way Adding graphs to your Rails application Connecting to a legacy database Building generators to automate installation of common files Building an XML-RPC API into your Rails applications Who this book is for

This book is for anyone who has gone beyond the basics of Rails and wants to learn higher-level Rails techniques. It is also useful for those experienced in other disciplines (such as Java and PHP) who want to learn Rails.