Rails is large, powerful, and new. How do you use it effectively? How do you harness the power? And, most important, how do you get high quality, real-world applications written?

From the latest Ajax effects to time-saving automation tips for your development process, Rails Recipes will show you how the experts have already solved the problems you have.

• Use generators to automate repetitive coding tasks.
• Create sophisticated role-based authentication schemes.
• Add live search and live preview to your site.
• Run tests when anyone checks code in.
• How to create tagged data the right way.
• and many, many more...

Owning Rails Recipes is like having the best Rails programmers sitting next to you while you code.

If I were to buy a real recipe book—you know, a book about cooking food—I wouldn’t be looking for a book that tells me how to dice vegetables or how to use a skillet. I can find that kind of information in an overview about cooking.

A recipe book is about how to make food you might not be able to easily figure out how to make on your own. It’s about skipping the trial and error and jumping straight to a solution that works. Sometimes it’s even about making food you never imagined you could make.

If you want to learn how to make great Indian food, you buy a recipe book by a great Indian chef and follow his or her directions. You’re not just buying any old solution. You’re buying a solution you can trust to be good. That’s why famous chefs sell lots and lots of books. People want to make food that tastes good, and these chefs know how to make (and teach you how to make) food that tastes good.

Good recipe books do teach you techniques. Sometimes they even teach you about new tools. But they teach these skills within the context and with the end goal of making something—not just to teach them.

Rails Recipes is for people who understand Rails and now want to see how an experienced Rails developer would attack specific problems. Like with a real recipe book, you should be able to flip through the table of contents, find something you need to get done, and get from start to finish in a matter of minutes.

I’m going to assume that you know the basics or that you can find them in a tutorial or an online reference. When you’re busy trying to make something, you don’t have spare time to read through introductory material. So if you’re still in the beginning stages of learning Rails, be sure to have a copy of Agile Web Development with Rails [TH05] and a bookmark to the Rails API documentation handy.