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.

Ruby is an increasingly popular, fully object-oriented dynamic programming language, hailed by many practitioners as the finest and most useful language available today. When Ruby first burst onto the scene in the Western world, the Pragmatic Programmers were there with the definitive reference manual, Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmer’s Guide.

Now in its second edition, author Dave Thomas has expanded the famous Pickaxe book with over 200 pages of new content, covering all the improved language features of Ruby 1.8 and standard library modules. The Pickaxe contains four major sections:

• An acclaimed tutorial on using Ruby.
• The definitive reference to the language.
• Complete documentation on all built-in classes, modules, and methods
• Complete descriptions of all 98 standard libraries.

If you enjoyed the First Edition, you’ll appreciate the expanded content, including enhanced coverage of installation, packaging, documenting Ruby source code, threading and synchronization, and enhancing Ruby’s capabilities using C-language extensions. Programming for the World Wide Web is easy in Ruby, with new chapters on XML/RPC, SOAP, distributed Ruby, templating systems, and other web services. There’s even a new chapter on unit testing.

This is the definitive reference manual for Ruby, including a description of all the standard library modules, a complete reference to all built-in classes and modules (including more than 250 significant changes since the First Edition). Coverage of other features has grown tremendously, including details on how to harness the sophisticated capabilities of irb, so you can dynamically examine and experiment with your running code. “Ruby is a wonderfully powerful and useful language, and whenever I’m working with it this book is at my side”

Building Responsive Web Applications with AJAX and PHP is the most practical and efficient resource a reader can get to enter the exciting world of AJAX. This book will teach you how to create faster, lighter, better web applications by using the AJAX ingredients technologies to their full potential. Assuming a basic knowledge of PHP, XML, JavaScript and MySQL, this book will help you understand how the heart of AJAX beats and how the constituent technologies work together. After teaching the foundations, the book will walk you through eight real-world case studies covering tasks you’ll be likely to need for your own applications: - AJAX enabled form-validation page - Online chat room - Customized type-ahead text entry solution, that helps users find the help page for the PHP functions - A simple cards game that supports multiple simultaneous sessions - Whiteboard where online users can draw online - Database-enabled, editable and customizable data grid - RSS aggregator application - Use the script.aculo.us JavaScript toolkit to build a drag&drop enabled sortable list The appendixes guide you through installing your working environment, using powerful tools that enable debugging, improving, and profiling your code, working with XSLT and XPath, and working with existing AJAX frameworks.

A practical and concise book that teaches XML from the ground up. This tutorial style presents various XML methodologies and techniques in an easy to understand way, building a basis for further exploration.

XML is essentially an enabling technology, dry and boring on its own. As a result, most books on the market are dry, and academic in nature teaching theory rather than practice. This book actually teaches practical, real-world applications of XML, using the very latest version of PHP (PHP 5) as the base language.

No Nonsense XML Web Development with PHP explains how XML can be put to use in real-world projects. The book also covers buzz topics such as RSS and Web Services.

Get an expert introduction to the new JavaScript enhancements (code-named “Atlas”) for Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0. More than a basic AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript And XML) script library, the Microsoft implementation brings object orientation to JavaScript, together with enhanced client-side and server-side controls that greatly simplify coding while delivering enhanced Web experiences with any browser. Scheduled for release with the next version of Microsoft Visual Studio®, code named “Orcas,” AJAX extensions and tools can be used by developers today. This book offers expert insights direct from the Microsoft product team and noted ASP authority Dino Esposito, as well as hands-on instruction and examples of Web development with AJAX. This ideal reference will be updated online, keeping readers up to date with the evolving tool. The book includes code samples in ASP.NET 2.0 created using C# and JavaScript.

Key Book Benefits:

- Provides coverage of both client-side and server-side development

- Covers ASP.NET AJAX 1.0, as released in January 2007

- Features Online Product Extensions for updated code samples during the continuing development process

“The Java landscape is littered with libraries, tools, and specifications. What’s been lacking is the expertise to fuse them into solutions to real-world problems. These patterns are the intellectual mortar for J2EE software construction.”
–John Vlissides, co-author of Design Patterns, the “Gang of Four” book

“The authors of Core J2EE Patterns have harvested a really useful set of patterns. They show how to apply these patterns and how to refactor your system to take advantage of them. It’s just like having a team of experts sitting at your side.”
–Grady Booch, Chief Scientist, Rational Software Corporation

“The authors do a great job describing useful patterns for application architectures. The section on refactoring is worth the price of the entire book!”
–Craig McClanahan, Struts Lead Architect and Specification Lead for JavaServer Faces

“Core J2EE Patterns is the gospel that should accompany every J2EE application server…Built upon the in-the-trenches expertise of its veteran architect authors, this volume unites the platform’s many technologies and APIs in a way that application architects can use, and provides insightful answers to the whys, whens, and hows of the J2EE platform.”
–Sean Neville, JRun Enterprise Architect, Macromedia

Developers often confuse learning the technology with learning to design with the technology. In this book, senior architects from the Sun Java Center share their cumulative design experience on Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) technology.

The primary focus of the book is on patterns, best practices, design strategies, and proven solutions using the key J2EE technologies including JavaServer Pages(TM) (JSP(TM)), Servlets, Enterprise JavaBeans(TM) (EJB(TM)), and Java(TM) Message Service (JMS) APIs. The J2EE Pattern Catalog with 21 patterns and numerous strategies is presented to document and promote best practices for these technologies.

Core J2EE Patterns, Second Edition offers the following:

• J2EE Pattern Catalog with 21 patterns–fully revised and newly documented patterns providing proven solutions for enterprise applications
• Design strategies for the presentation tier, business tier, and integration tier
• Coverage of servlets, JSP, EJB, JMS, and Web Services
• J2EE technology bad practices
• Refactorings to improve existing designs using patterns
• Fully illustrated with UML diagrams
• Extensive sample code for patterns, strategies, and refactorings

J2EE has become required knowledge for any serious Java developer, but learning this large and complex specification requires a substantial investment of time and energy. Sams Teach Yourself J2EE in 21 Days, 2/E presents the enterprise Java architecture in accessible, easy-to-comprehend lessons, describing how each J2EE tool solves the challenges of n-Tier development. Using the architecture as a roadmap, chapters describe Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB), JavaServer Pages (JSP), Java Servlets, and more, giving readers a full understanding of J2EE development.

Further chapters cover the role of XML, custom JSP tags, creating J2EE Web Services, and how Java Connectors allow J2EE applications to interact with legacy and non-Java systems. The book finishes with sample applications which put all the pieces together, including an example using J2EE to create Web Services. Along the way, every concept is illustrated with practical, real-world examples to ensure understanding by Java students as well as experts.

The Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) is an extremely powerful platform for developing enterprise-level Java-based applications, primarily for the server. This book shows you how to harness that power, examining how the pieces of the new J2EE 5 platform fit together.

This book surpasses explaining how to code a JSP or an EJB: It explains when and where to use these APIs, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and perhaps most importantly, how to employ the best practices for using them.

Hands-on tutorials are also included, along with clear explanations and working code examples. You will grow to take the next step—from writing client-side desktop applications to writing enterprise applications. You will also learn how to use the individual APIs and tools in the J2EE platform, and how to merge these to create your own enterprise applications.

What is this book about?

The results of using J2EE in practice are often disappointing: applications are often slow, unduly complex, and take too long to develop. Rod Johnson believes that the problem lies not in J2EE itself, but in that it is often used badly. Many J2EE publications advocate approaches that, while fine in theory, often fail in reality, or deliver no real business value.

Expert One-on-One: J2EE Design and Development aims to demystify J2EE development. Using a practical focus, it shows how to use J2EE technologies to reduce, rather than increase, complexity. Rod draws on his experience of designing successful high-volume J2EE applications and salvaging failing projects, as well as intimate knowledge of the J2EE specifications, to offer a real-world, how-to guide on how you too can make J2EE work in practice.

It will help you to solve common problems with J2EE and avoid the expensive mistakes often made in J2EE projects. It will guide you through the complexity of the J2EE services and APIs to enable you to build the simplest possible solution, on time and on budget. Rod takes a practical, pragmatic approach, questioning J2EE orthodoxy where it has failed to deliver results in practice and instead suggesting effective, proven approaches.

What does this book cover?

In this book, you will learn

• When to use a distributed architecture
• When and how to use EJB
• How to develop an efficient data access strategy
• How to design a clean and maintainable web interface
• How to design J2EE applications for performance

Who is this book for?

This book would be of value to most enterprise developers. Although some of the discussion (for example, on performance and scalability) would be most relevant to architects and lead developers, the practical focus would make it useful to anyone with some familiarity with J2EE. Because of the complete design-deployment coverage, a less advanced developer could work through the book along with a more introductory text, and successfully build and understand the sample application. This comprehensive coverage would also be useful to developers in smaller organisations, who might be called upon to fill several normally distinct roles.

What is special about this book?

Wondering what differentiates this book from others like it in the market? Take a look:

• It does not just discuss technology, but stress its practical application. The book is driven from the need to solve common tasks, rather than by the elements of J2EE.
• It discuss risks in J2EE development
• It takes the reader through the entire design, development and build process of a non-trivial application. This wouldn’t be compressed into one or two chapters, like the Java Pet Store, but would be a realistic example comparable to the complexity of applications readers would need to build.
• At each point in the design, alternative choices would be discussed. This would be important both where there’s a real problem with the obvious alternative, and where the obvious alternatives are perhaps equally valid.
• It emphasizes the use of OO design and design patterns in J2EE, without becoming a theoretical book

ASP.NET 2.0 Unleashed is a revision of the best-selling ASP.NET Unleashed, by Microsoft Software Legend Stephen Walther. It covers virtually all features of ASP.NET 2.0 including more than 50 new controls, personalization, master pages, and web parts. All code samples are presented in VB and C#. Throughout the more than 2,000 pages, you will be shown how to develop state-of-the-art Web applications using Microsoft’s latest development tools. This resource is guaranteed to be used as a reference guide over and over!