As usual, my considerations grouped by chapter:
Creating our own renderer #
Very interesting way of starting a book. The author presents a gem used throughout the book called enginex. It’s an executable used to create bare rails engines. In this chapter he use it for creating an engine to add pdf rendering capabilities to Rails.
Building Models with Active Models #
The topic is nice. José is nice too. He covers the ActiveModel APIs in a very clear and deep way. Following the rule “Test first”, the author wrote a compliance test for ActiveModel, reading the evolving of the test you’ll be able to understand what an ActiveModel really is. The example of the chapter is building a flexible mail form using the Rails APIs. Very, very enjoyable chapter.
Retrieving View Templates From Custom Stored #
Once again nice topic. The author guides you though a complete understanding of how rails magically retrieves view template and gives view a wonderful explanation of what is the view_context object and how it works. Then, he introduces you to the resolver API and will show you how you can use that API to write a sqlresolver. The last part of the chapter describes how to run your resolver in production. This part contains an enjoyable and detailed explanation of ruby hashes. A nice guy created a gem after reading this chapter.
Sending Multipart Emails Using Template Handlers #
The chapter concludes the trip through the rendering stack presenting the Template Resolver API. The example used is very nice, the chapter is build around the writing of a markdown erb template handler for emails. First of all, the author gives you a couple on nice handlers, just to clarify how they really work. Then he pass to write the handler that gave the name to the chapter. At the end, the author explains how to use rails 3 generators to turn his example into a gem.
Managing Application Events with Rails Engines #
Another great topic. The chapter starts with a clear explanation of the reasons behind ActiveSupport::Notifications API. Then the author guides you though these APIs with a very nice example. The aim of the chapter is writing a gem to store all the SQL queries done by a rails project in a mongodb database. Later in the chapter, you read how to visualize all the stored queries with a rails engine and then how to store notifications asynchronously. The chapter contains also a very good explanation of the relationship between Rails and Rack.
Writing DRY Controllers with Responders #
To be honest, I didn’t know what responder are before reading this chapter. So, I was really excited to read it. As always, José Valim doesn’t disappoint the reader. The chapter suddenly presents how responders works. The first part of the chapter contains a very clever table that summarizes how Rails controllers work with HTTP verbs. It’s a very interesting topic and the author’s approach to the topics covered makes the topics themselves even more interesting.
Translating Applications Using Key-Value Backends #
Another great topic. The chapter starts with a brief description of the history of I18n and focuses on the necessity of giving people the chance to translate application without dealing with yaml files, maybe using another application and storing translation in the database. But dealing with a database could give performance problems and then the author gives use a super awesome example. You’ll learn how to store translations using Redis and manage them with a sinatra interface.
What I liked most #
Generally speaking, when a book is difficult to read it isn’t a good sign. But this one is difficult to read for very good reasons. The topics are deeply covered, the example are great. It’s absolutely fair to say that this book is actually the most advanced Rails book on the market. So, you have to read it if you’re not a rails beginner. And I would to say just another thing. We need other books like this one. Imagine to read something like “Rails internals” written by choose-your-favourites-rails-core-member.
What I disliked most #
I can’t dislike a book like this one. But I have to confess that there are a lot of “let’s”. Well, I’m not a native speaker so I can’t suggest a better way to make that kind of sentences. But, you know, I’m just saying a stupid thing. This book is just awesome.