Ajax on Rails

Preface

This book is for web developers wanting to master two of the most promising recent developments in the field: Ajax and Ruby on Rails. By the end of this book, you’ll be equipped with the knowledge to build richly interactive web applications with Rails.

Assumptions This Book Makes

This book assumes that you’re familiar with the basic technologies used in building dynamic web sites, on both the client and server sides.

On the client slide, that means HTML/XHTML (which, for the purposes of this book, will be considered equivalent) and CSS. Extensive JavaScript knowledge isn’t required, but you’ll be well served by a refresher on JavaScript syntax.

On the server side, no specific language experience is assumed, but some grasp of the basic concepts is. If you have experience building web applications in a language like PHP, Java, or ASP, you’ll have no trouble understanding the concepts behind Ruby on Rails. But, because this book doesn’t cover everything there is to know about Ruby and Rails, you’ll want to augment it with other resources—such as those recommended in Chapter 1.

Contents of This Book

This book can be roughly divided into three major parts, plus three complete example applications. The first part introduces all the tools and techniques of Ajax on Rails development, in a fairly linear fashion, from soup to nuts. The second part takes on a handful of larger themes (e.g., usability, security, testing) and provides an in-depth guide to each, in the context of Rails and ...