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Sinatra: Up and Running
Take advantage of Sinatra, the Ruby-based web application library and domain-specific language used by Heroku, GitHub, Apple, Engine Yard, and other prominent organizations. With this concise book, you will quickly gain working knowledge of Sinatra and its minimalist approach to building both standalone and modular web applications.
Sinatra serves as a lightweight wrapper around Rack middleware, with syntax that maps closely to functions exposed by HTTP verbs, which makes it ideal for web services and APIs. If you have experience building applications with Ruby, you’ll quickly learn language fundamentals and see under-the-hood techniques, with the help of several practical examples. Then you’ll get hands-on experience with Sinatra by building your own blog engine.
• Learn Sinatra’s core concepts, and get started by building a simple application
• Create views, manage sessions, and work with Sinatra route definitions
• Become familiar with the language’s internals, and take a closer look at Rack
• Use different subclass methods for building flexible and robust architectures
• Put Sinatra to work: build a blog that takes advantage of service hooks provided by the GitHub API
Sinatra serves as a lightweight wrapper around Rack middleware, with syntax that maps closely to functions exposed by HTTP verbs, which makes it ideal for web services and APIs. If you have experience building applications with Ruby, you’ll quickly learn language fundamentals and see under-the-hood techniques, with the help of several practical examples. Then you’ll get hands-on experience with Sinatra by building your own blog engine.
• Learn Sinatra’s core concepts, and get started by building a simple application
• Create views, manage sessions, and work with Sinatra route definitions
• Become familiar with the language’s internals, and take a closer look at Rack
• Use different subclass methods for building flexible and robust architectures
• Put Sinatra to work: build a blog that takes advantage of service hooks provided by the GitHub API
110 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2011
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53 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
April 19, 2012
Books on programming/software development have always been plagued with too much content, either failing to be concise and terse or padded with all sorts of extraneous filler or worse, taking too many words to educate an aspiring apprentice. It seems that the *C Programming Language* by Kernighan and Ritchie, the classic programmer instruction text, is a Sisyphusian goal that few are unable to achieve.
OTOH, with the explosion of ebooks, there is now the tendency to reduce the content a bit too much, and squeeze a book into less than a 100 pages. Enter *Sinatra: Up and Running* which suffers from this malady.
Oh, it is an alright treatment of getting up to snuff with Sinatra, the simplistic, no frills, web framework that easily enables a developer to get a HTTP REST framework off the ground in no time, rivaling PHP in simplicity of building a web app. And there is decent coverage of some of Sinatra's internals. And the final chapter elucidates a "roll your own", very minimalistic blog engine.
But here is what is missing -- a more robust application example, or additional examples. More information on Rack, the middleware portion and on how to extend and customize. There are tidbits on how to drive Sinatra in "modular" form, rather than "classical" form, but the guide here was a tad too terse for my taste. Also, I recognize that reference type material gets dated fast, but it still would have been nice to have a quick reference chart / FAQ of how to accomplish specific tasks (kind of like the old Sinatra book did, before it got tore down and replaced with a hodgepodge of disparate blurbs).
OTOH, with the explosion of ebooks, there is now the tendency to reduce the content a bit too much, and squeeze a book into less than a 100 pages. Enter *Sinatra: Up and Running* which suffers from this malady.
Oh, it is an alright treatment of getting up to snuff with Sinatra, the simplistic, no frills, web framework that easily enables a developer to get a HTTP REST framework off the ground in no time, rivaling PHP in simplicity of building a web app. And there is decent coverage of some of Sinatra's internals. And the final chapter elucidates a "roll your own", very minimalistic blog engine.
But here is what is missing -- a more robust application example, or additional examples. More information on Rack, the middleware portion and on how to extend and customize. There are tidbits on how to drive Sinatra in "modular" form, rather than "classical" form, but the guide here was a tad too terse for my taste. Also, I recognize that reference type material gets dated fast, but it still would have been nice to have a quick reference chart / FAQ of how to accomplish specific tasks (kind of like the old Sinatra book did, before it got tore down and replaced with a hodgepodge of disparate blurbs).
December 23, 2013
One of the best programming books I've ever read. It's a short read, but incredibly dense and packed full of useful information, e.g. HTTP verbs, Rack, Modular Sinatra Apps, etc. If you're thinking about giving Sinatra a try, be sure to read this book.
July 21, 2019
Good introduction to Sinatra
The book provided a good amount of detail into the internals of the gem. Anyone who finished this book should have no problem with competency with Sinatra.
The book provided a good amount of detail into the internals of the gem. Anyone who finished this book should have no problem with competency with Sinatra.
March 28, 2021
Legendary Tech In a Full-Stack (JS Frameworks) World
I was blown away by the idea of something like Sinatra, back when Ruby on Rails had become mainstream. It was so simple. You naturally started to use the Terminal and learned enough about Ruby itself.
This book learned me about Sinatra and the concept of things like middleware. Writing routers and controllers (while understanding what I was doing and why I did it), wasn’t boring but actually interesting.
Sinatra via this book was, to me, the gateway to creating web apps via a small framework built on top of Ruby.
I recommend this book—maybe especially in 2021, in today’s era of React, Vue, Angular and Node JS.
I was blown away by the idea of something like Sinatra, back when Ruby on Rails had become mainstream. It was so simple. You naturally started to use the Terminal and learned enough about Ruby itself.
This book learned me about Sinatra and the concept of things like middleware. Writing routers and controllers (while understanding what I was doing and why I did it), wasn’t boring but actually interesting.
Sinatra via this book was, to me, the gateway to creating web apps via a small framework built on top of Ruby.
I recommend this book—maybe especially in 2021, in today’s era of React, Vue, Angular and Node JS.
Currently reading
March 9, 2017I read this over the xmas vacations..
I had no real experience in web frameworks - I'm not a web developer.
It was fun, got deeper later on.. so I want to re-read the last half of the book.
I won't feel comfortable writing a real review until then...
I had no real experience in web frameworks - I'm not a web developer.
It was fun, got deeper later on.. so I want to re-read the last half of the book.
I won't feel comfortable writing a real review until then...
November 25, 2015
Sinatra: Up and Running is a more advanced look at the already idiomatic Sinatra library. The book is relatively short (5 chapters) and it can be categorized as a light-read.
Even though it's very short, author Alan Harris guides the reader through Sinatra in a very descriptive manner leaving barely (if any) questions unanswered.
You might ask, what's lacking then if it's focused on explanations? - Book projects and exercises. However the code examples are sufficient mostly. There are places here and there where 1-2 examples could be provided, but that's a minor problem in the book.
For the whole book, there are only 2-3 half superficial projects that are less than 100 lines combined. This doesn't prove any of the author points and definitely won't make this book stick to the reader. Compared to Jump Start Sinatra where the reader builds a DB-driven website with Sinatra and SASS - this is a huge loss for Sinatra: Up and Running.
The interesting chapter of the book and probably the only reason why I'm giving it 3 stars and not 1-2, is `Chapter 3: A Peek behind the Curtains`. It explains how Sinatra works and integrates/utilises Rack.
Even though it's very short, author Alan Harris guides the reader through Sinatra in a very descriptive manner leaving barely (if any) questions unanswered.
You might ask, what's lacking then if it's focused on explanations? - Book projects and exercises. However the code examples are sufficient mostly. There are places here and there where 1-2 examples could be provided, but that's a minor problem in the book.
For the whole book, there are only 2-3 half superficial projects that are less than 100 lines combined. This doesn't prove any of the author points and definitely won't make this book stick to the reader. Compared to Jump Start Sinatra where the reader builds a DB-driven website with Sinatra and SASS - this is a huge loss for Sinatra: Up and Running.
The interesting chapter of the book and probably the only reason why I'm giving it 3 stars and not 1-2, is `Chapter 3: A Peek behind the Curtains`. It explains how Sinatra works and integrates/utilises Rack.
August 29, 2013
A great introduction and beginner's reference for Sinatra. "Up and Running" fulfills its promise admirably, as within a few hours, I'd consumed its text completely and had a few basic Sinatra apps up and running. The book is certainly not exhaustive, but for someone looking to get started and as a reference once bootstrapped, this one is a great choice for the price. It's paced well, relates material to common implementations and use cases web devs would already be familiar with, and it does so without being condescending.
May 2, 2014
It does exactly what it claims to do. It is a very fast, easy introduction to getting started with the Sinatra web framework for Ruby, a lightweight framework that avoids surprises apart from how surprisingly easy it is to get started. The book also covers a number of approaches to developing Sinatra web applications that are not well covered in online tutorials I have found. For someone who knows enough Ruby to get by, who wants to learn Sinatra, this book is a great introduction.
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April 14, 2014Nice concise overview of the framework and short enough that it can be used as a reference. The chapters on Rack were really the most interesting part of the book.
March 24, 2013
Very good. Gets straight to the point and doesn't skimp on the technicalities of how Sinatra works. I feel like I have a much better understanding of Sinatra apps after reading this.
May 23, 2013
It felt like an extended Github page, and maybe it were :)
November 24, 2013
Exactly what it says on the cover.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews