Ruby on Rails helps you produce high-quality, beautiful-looking web applications quickly. You concentrate on creating the application, and Rails takes care of the details.

Tens of thousands of developers have used this award-winning book to learn Rails. It’s a broad, far-reaching tutorial and reference that’s recommended by the Rails core team. If you’re new to Rails, you’ll get step-by-step guidance. If you’re an experienced developer, this book will give you the comprehensive, insider information you need.

Rails has evolved over the years, and this book has evolved along with it. We still start with a step-by-step walkthrough of building a real application, and in-depth chapters look at the built-in Rails features. This edition now gives new Ruby and Rails users more information on the Ruby language and takes more time to explain key concepts throughout. Best practices on how to apply Rails continue to change, and this edition keeps up. Examples use Concerns, Russian Doll caching, and Turbolinks, and the book focuses throughout on the right way to use Rails. Additionally, this edition now works on Ruby 2.0, a new release of Ruby with substantial functional and performance improvements.

This edition is for Rails 4.0 and beyond.

Learn Rails 4 Online at the Pragmatic Studio

Want to learn how to build Rails 4 apps interactively through engaging videos and hands-on exercises? Check out The Pragmatic Studio’s online Ruby on Rails Programming course.

In this online, self-paced course you’ll learn the fundamentals every Rails developer should know, and how to put all the pieces together, so you can confidently create your first Rails app or jump right into an existing app. Throughout the course you’ll also learn key design principles and practices to help you craft robust and flexible Rails apps.

“One of the best learning experiences I’ve ever had! I’ve gone through many courses and books. From all of these, your Rails course is the best in terms of teaching style, course structure, topics, and being up-to-date with Rails 4.” — Mate Kaszas

Read the reviews .

• Source code
• Errata
• Releases

Each of our books has its own dedicated discussion area, where readers help each other out. Many authors also choose to drop by.

Join in…

Here are some recent topics:

• F3, Ch. 11, p. 141 Highlighlighting Changes - jquery-ui
• Chapter 8, C5: Caching - unable to verify
• New edition?
• Chapter 2 - Demo App
• Chapter 11 - 12

Full Table of Contents

Introduction

• Getting Started
  • Installing Rails
  • Instant Gratification
  • The Architecture of Rails Applications
  • Introduction to Ruby
• Building an Application
  • The Depot Application
  • Task A: Creating the Application
  • Task B: Validation and Unit Testing
  • Task C: Catalog Display
  • Task D: Cart Creation
  • Task E: A Smarter Cart
  • Task F: Add a Dash of Ajax
  • Task G: Check Out!
  • Task H: Sending Mail
  • Task I: Logging In
  • Task J: Internationalization
  • Task K: Deployment and Production
  • Depot Retrospective
• Rails in Depth
  • Finding Your Way Around Rails
  • Active Record
  • Action Dispatch and Action Controller
  • Action View
  • Caching
  • Migrations
  • Non-Browser Applications
  • Rails’ Dependencies
  • Rails Plugins
  • Where to Go From Here