The Book Of Ruby

The Book Of Ruby is written by Huw Collingbourne - one of the developers of the Ruby In Steel IDE.

Permissions: You may copy or distribute the text and programs of The Book Of Ruby but you may not modify them without prior consent of the author nor may you distribute the eBook in any form other than that in which it is provided. You may not print the text for redistribution. You may, however, print the chapters for your own personal use. In no circumstances may you make a charge for The Book Of Ruby or for any of its component parts.

The Book of Ruby is Copyright © 2009 Huw Collingbourne.

The Little Book Of Ruby: Note that The Book Of Ruby is an in-depth guide to Ruby. For a much simpler guide to the principal features of the Ruby language, we also have the free eBook, The Little Book Of Ruby.

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The Book Of Ruby - Table Of Contents

Introduction
 GETTING STARTED WITH RUBY

• How To Read This Book
• Digging Deeper
• Making Sense Of The Text

 RUBY AND RAILS

• What Is Ruby?
• What Is Rails?
• Download Ruby
• Get The Source Code Of The Sample Programs
• Running Ruby Programs
• The Ruby Library Documentation

Chapter One
 STRINGS, NUMBERS, CLASSES AND OBJECTS

• Getting and Putting Input
• Strings and Embedded Evaluation
• Numbers
• Testing a Condition: if … then
• Local and Global Variables
• Classes and Objects
• Instance Variables
• Messages, Methods and Polymorphism
• Constructors – new and initialize
• Inspecting Objects

Chapter Two
 CLASS HIERARCHIES, ATTRIBUTES AND CLASS VARIABLES

• Superclasses and Subclasses
• Passing Arguments To The Superclass
• Accessor Methods
• ‘Set’ Accessors
• Attribute Readers and Writers
• Calling Methods of a Superclass
• Class Variables
   DIGGING DEEPER
• Superclasses
• Constants Inside Classes
• Partial Classes

Chapter Three
 STRINGS AND RANGES

• User-Defined String Delimiters
• Backquotes
• String Handling
   DIGGING DEEPER
• Ranges
• Iterating With A Range
• Heredocs
• String Literals

Chapter Four
 ARRAYS AND HASHES

• Arrays
• Creating Arrays
• Multi-Dimensional Arrays
• Iterating Over Arrays
• Indexing Into Arrays
• Copying Arrays
• Testing Arrays For Equality
• Sorting Arrays
• Comparing Values
• Array Methods
• Hashes
• Creating Hashes
• Indexing Into A Hash
• Copying A Hash
• Sorting A Hash
• Hash Methods
   DIGGING DEEPER
• Treating Hashes As Arrays
• Appending and Concatenating
• Matrices and Vectors
• Sets

Chapter Five
 LOOPS AND ITERATORS

• For Loops
• Multiple Iterator Arguments
• Blocks
• While Loops
• While Modifiers
• Until Loops
• Loop
   DIGGING DEEPER
• The Enumerable Module
• Custom Comparisons

Chapter Six
 CONDITIONAL STATEMENTS

• If..Then..Else
• And..Or..Not
• If..Elsif
• Unless
• If and Unless Modifiers
• Case Statements
• The === Method
• Alternative Case Syntax
   DIGGING DEEPER
• Boolean Conditions
• Negation
• Eccentricities of Boolean Operators
• Catch and Throw

Chapter Seven
 METHODS

• Class Methods
• Class Variables
• What Are Class Methods For?
• Ruby Constructors – new or initialize?
• Singleton Methods
• Singleton Classes
• Overriding Methods
• public, private and protected
   DIGGING DEEPER
• Protected and Private in Descendent Classes
• Invading The Privacy Of Private Methods
• Singleton Class Methods
• Nested Methods
• Method Names

Chapter Eight
 PASSING ARGUMENTS AND RETURNING VALUES

• Returning Values
• Returning Multiple Values
• Default and Multiple Arguments
• Assignment and Parameter Passing
• Integers Are Special
• The One-Way-In, One-Way-Out Principle
• Parallel Assignment
   DIGGING DEEPER
• By Reference Or By Value?
• Are Assignments Copies Or References?
• When Are Two Objects Identical?
• Parentheses Avoid Ambiguity

Chapter Nine
 EXCEPTION HANDLING

• Rescue
• Ensure
• Else
• Error Numbers
• Retry
• Raise
   DIGGING DEEPER
• Omitting begin and end
• catch…throw

Chapter Ten
 BLOCKS, PROCS AND LAMBDAS

• What Is A Block?
• Line Breaks are Significant
• Nameless Functions
• Looks Familiar?
• Blocks and Arrays
• Procs and Lambdas
• Creating Objects From Blocks
• What is a Closure?
• Yield
• Blocks Within Blocks
• Passing Named Proc Arguments
• Precedence Rules
• Blocks As Iterators
   DIGGING DEEPER
• Returning Blocks From Methods
• Blocks and Instance Variables
• Blocks and Local Variables

Chapter Eleven
 SYMBOLS

• Symbols and Strings
• Symbols and Variables
• Why Use Symbols?
   DIGGING DEEPER
• What Is A Symbol?

Chapter Twelve
 MODULES AND MIXINS

• A Module Is Like A Class…
• Module Methods
• Modules as Namespaces
• Module ‘Instance Methods’
• Included Modules or ‘Mixins’
• Name Conflicts
• Alias methods
• Mix-in With Care!
• Including Modules From Files
   DIGGING DEEPER
• Modules and Classes
• Pre-Defined Modules
• Scope Resolution
• Module Functions
• Extending Objects

Chapter Thirteen
 FILES AND IO

• Opening and Closing Files
• Files and Directories…
• Copying Files
• Directory Enquiries
• A Discursion Into Recursion
• Sorting By Size
   DIGGING DEEPER
• Recursion Made Simple

Chapter Fourteen
 YAML

• Converting To YAML
• Nested Sequences
• Saving YAML Data
• Omitting Variables On Saving
• Multiple Documents, One File
• A YAML Database
• Adventures in YAML
   DIGGING DEEPER
• A Brief Guide To YAML

Chapter Fifteen
 MARSHAL

• Saving and Loading Data
• Omitting Variables On Saving
• Saving Singletons
• YAML and Singletons
   DIGGING DEEPER
• Marshal Version Numbers

Chapter Sixteen
 REGULAR EXPRESSIONS

• Making Matches
• Match Groups
• MatchData
• Pre and Post Match
• Greedy Matching
• String methods
• File Operations
   DIGGING DEEPER
• Regular Expressions

Chapter Seventeen
 THREADS

• Creating Threads
• Running Threads
• The Main Thread
• Thread Status
• Ensuring That A Thread Executes
• Thread Priorities
• Mutexes
   DIGGING DEEPER
• Passing Execution To Other Thread

Chapter Eighteen
 DEBUGGING AND TESTING

• IRB - Interactive Ruby
• Debugging
• Unit Testing
   DIGGING DEEPER
• Assertions Available when Unit Testing
• Line Breaks Are Significant
• Graphical Debuggers

Chapter Nineteen
 RUBY ON RAILS

• First Install Rails
• MVC – Model, View, Controller
• A First Ruby On Rails Application
• Create A Rails Application
• Create A Controller
• Can’t Find The Database?
• Anatomy Of A Simple Rails Application
• Create A View
• Rails Tags
• Let’s Make A Blog!
   DIGGING DEEPER
• MVC
• The Rails Folders
• Other Ruby Frameworks

Chapter Twenty
 DYNAMIC PROGRAMMING

• Self-Modifying Programs
• Eval Magic
• Special Types of Eval
• Adding Variables and Methods
• Creating Classes At Runtime
• Bindings
• Send
• Remove Methods
• Handling Missing Methods
• Writing Programs At Runtime
   DIGGING DEEPER
• Freezing Objects

Appendices
 APPENDIX A: DOCUMENTING RUBY WITH RDOC

 APPENDIX B: INSTALLING MYSQL FOR RUBY ON RAILS

• Download MySQL
• Install MySQL
• Configure MySQL

 APPENDIX C: FURTHER READING

• Books
• E-Books

 APPENDIX D: WEB SITES

• Ruby and Rails Information

 APPENDIX E: RUBY AND RAILS DEVELOPMENT SOFTWARE

• IDEs/Editors
• Web Servers
• Databases

 APPENDIX F: RUBY IMPLEMENTATIONS

 INDEX