Product Description

Do you want to push Ruby to its limits? The Ruby Cookbook is the most comprehensive problem-solving guide to today's hottest programming language. It gives you hundreds of solutions to real-world problems, with clear explanations and thousands of lines of code you can use in your own projects.
From data structures and algorithms, to integration with cutting-edge technologies, the Ruby Cookbook has something for every programmer. Beginners and advanced Rubyists alike will learn how to program with:

* Strings and numbers

* Arrays and hashes

* Classes, modules, and namespaces

* Reflection and metaprogramming

* XML and HTML processing

* Ruby on Rails (including Ajax integration)

* Databases

* Graphics

* Internet services like email, SSH, and BitTorrent

* Web services

* Multitasking

* Graphical and terminal interfaces
If you need to write a web application, this book shows you how to get started with Rails. If you're a system administrator who needs to rename thousands of files, you'll see how to use Ruby for this and other everyday tasks. You'll learn how to read and write Excel spreadsheets, classify text with Bayesian filters, and create PDF files. We've even included a few silly tricks that were too cool to leave out, like how to blink the lights on your keyboard.
The Ruby Cookbook is the most useful book yet written about Ruby. When you need to solve a problem, don't reinvent the wheel: look it up in the Cookbook.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #63491 in Books
• Published on: 2006-07-19
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 873 pages

From the Publisher
From data structures and algorithms, to integration with cutting-edge technologies, the Ruby Cookbook has something for every programmer. When you need to solve a problem, don't reinvent the wheel: look it up in the Cookbook.

About the Author
Lucas Carlson is a professional Ruby programmer who specializes in Rails web development. He has authored a half dozen libraries and contributed to many others, including Rails and RedCloth. He lives in Portland, Oregon and maintains a website at http://rufy.com/.

Leonard Richardson has been programming since he was eight years old. Recently, the quality of his code has improved somewhat. He is responsible for libraries in many languages, including Rubyful Soup. A California native, he now works in New York and maintains a website at http://www.crummy.com/.

Customer Reviews

Excellent and thorough
Having had this book for a week now, and used it on more than a few occasions, I can say this is as good as the other "cookbook" books from O'Reilly.

Coverage is split over a host of topics, and, they've even included a small, but interesting chapter on Rails (the hot Ruby topic at the moment).

It's always useful finding code for things, and the helpful commentaries on the code provide a degree of insight that's hard to pick up from just reading someone else's source-code.

Another great Cookbook from O'Reilly
As with most O'Reilly cookbooks, Ruby Cookbook has two main avenues of exploration: the core of the language, and an introduction to some of the more important libraries, presented as the solutions to a series of themed tasks and problems the working programmer might face.

Coverage of the likes of XML, databases, networking, web services is all present as you'd expect, but I always enjoy the exploration of the core language the most, especially as it applies to strings, arrays and hashes, where the idioms and 'zen' of programming in a language are normally revealed. Ruby Cookbook excels in this area, but it also provides a very solid grounding in Ruby's object system, namespaces/modules and blocks. The basics of Ruby's metaprogramming and reflective abilities are also well enumerated, although the recipe-like structure of the book doesn't quite communicate the 'magic' behaviour that pervasive Ruby metaprogramming (exemplified by Rails, of course) conjures.

If you've read Perl Cookbook, rest assured that the Ruby version is easily as good, although as you might expect, in the latter half of the book there's less emphasis in Ruby Cookbook on low level networking and sysadmin work and more on higher level libraries. That said, the chapter on Rails felt a bit superfluous.

This book is well-written and thorough, and would be a great second Ruby book (The Pickaxe being the obvious example for a first book). Some of the examples are even quite amusing. Unless you were hoping for some truly in-depth metaprogramming detail, you'd be hard pressed to find anything wrong with Ruby Cookbook, except for the fact that it's competing with established Ruby must-read The Ruby Way, which covers very similar ground, in a very similar style. You don't need both books, and I preferred The Ruby Way. Nonetheless, this stands on its own as a great Ruby book.