While talking about my RailsConf presentation with Ben Wiseley, he
suggested writing a book on the same topic… so I did! The Money
Train is an e-book about building e-commerce sites using Ruby on Rails.
Read my blog entry about it at Archives · The Business of the Web
2006/06/rails-e-commerce-e-book/ or head to http://
www.agilewebdevelopment.com/book to dive right in.
As always, a big thank you goes out to DHH, the rest of the core
team, and all the plugin authors and others who contribute code and
time to make Rails a wonderful development framework.
–
Benjamin C.
http://www.bencurtis.com/
http://www.tesly.com/ – Collaborative test case management
http://www.agilewebdevelopment.com/ – Resources for the Rails community
Benjamin,
Sounds potentially to be a very useful book. Glanced over the site
but didn’t see specifics as to just how much of the book exists
currently. I like the way “beta” books work however recently purchased
one and very little exists in way of content with no real schedule for
updates. These things render the book to me useless as I can gather
the information from other sources in a shorter period of it’s
“indeterminate” time.
What I think would be useful is a TOC of sorts, list of what is
currently in the book. And it would be good to be specific, not
giving away the meat of the book, but as an example -
“drag and drop” shopping cart creation or “the basic / fundamental”
entities of an e-commerce site.
Looking forward to hearing more.
Stuart
Hi Benjamin,
my friend just bought me the book.
Is the chapter about paypal already finished, or is there more to be
expected?
Regards,
Beate
Thanks for buying the book! 
I hadn’t planned to write much more
about PayPal, unless someone has a specific need or question that I
can address. Is there something in particular you’d like to see added?
–
Benjamin C.
http://www.bencurtis.com/
http://www.tesly.com/ – Collaborative test case management
http://www.agilewebdevelopment.com/ – Resources for the Rails community
Head over to http://www.agilewebdevelopment.com/book and you’ll find
the table of contents, the intro from the book, and a sample section.
–
Benjamin C.
http://www.bencurtis.com/
http://www.tesly.com/ – Collaborative test case management
http://www.agilewebdevelopment.com/ – Resources for the Rails community
2006/6/20, Benjamin C. [email protected]:
Thanks for buying the book! I hadn’t planned to write much more
about PayPal, unless someone has a specific need or question that I
can address. Is there something in particular you’d like to see added?
I thought there would be a nice howto integrate paypal in my shop. But
if you say, it’s trivial with the gem, I’ll try myself 
Beate
Hmm, I’ll take a look at that – sorry for the inconvenience.
–
Benjamin C.
http://www.bencurtis.com/
http://www.tesly.com/ – Collaborative test case management
http://www.agilewebdevelopment.com/ – Resources for the Rails community
Ben,
The book looks like something I could really use, but I can’t seem to
be able to buy it. I get the following error from PayPal when I try:
Request-URI Too Large
The requested URL’s length exceeds the capacity limit for this server.
request failed: URI too long
Apache/1.3.33 Server at www.paypal.com Port 443
Bye,
Guy.
Has there been an update to this at all? I purchased it on June 20th
and haven’t heard anything since downloading the book.
Pat
It looks like I got a little too creative with PayPal – more
material for the book!
Everything should be working normally now.
–
Benjamin C.
http://www.bencurtis.com/
http://www.tesly.com/ – Collaborative test case management
http://www.agilewebdevelopment.com/ – Resources for the Rails community
My apologies for not catching that the first time. Any way to give
some status of how much is completed to date ?
Stuart
The TOC is pulled from the book, so everything listed in it is
currently available. Now, that is nowhere near 100% of what the
finished book will be, but I really don’t know yet if it’s closer to
30% or 70%. I’m pretty sure it’s somewhere in between those two
numbers, though.
–
Benjamin C.
http://www.bencurtis.com/
http://www.tesly.com/ – Collaborative test case management
http://www.agilewebdevelopment.com/ – Resources for the Rails community
Ben,
If one purchases the book will they get the updates as they are
released? Thanks.
Thanks for the reply and patience with me. Looks great and I’ll be
making the purchase very soon. Your work and efforts on this book are
greatly appreciated.
Stuart
Benjamin C. wrote:
make Rails a wonderful development framework.
Rails mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails
Looks interesting so far. How in depth are you going to go in terms of
actually processing payment through different processors. I see PayPal
is listed in the TOC, are you going to be discussing your experiences
with anyone else? Are you going to be discussing the Payment gem or
ActiveMerchant at all?
Thank you,
Matthew M.
blog.mattmargolis.net
Yes, everyone who purchases the book will get emails as new revisions
for this edition are released and will be able to download the latest
revision for free.
–
Benjamin C.
http://www.bencurtis.com/
http://www.tesly.com/ – Collaborative test case management
http://www.agilewebdevelopment.com/ – Resources for the Rails community
I’m shooting for an update in 2-3 weeks. Is there anything in
particular you’d like to see addressed in that update?
–
Benjamin C.
http://www.bencurtis.com/
http://www.tesly.com/ – Collaborative test case management
http://www.agilewebdevelopment.com/ – Resources for the Rails community
Ben,
Sorry - another question.
Is it a book beginners can learn and benefit from or are certain
abilities assumed, too advanced for someone “very” new to R & R.
Stuart
Actually, most of the payment section deals with TrustCommerce, the
provider with which I have the most experience and have enjoyed
using. I wasn’t planning on discussing ActiveMerchant since I use my
own code for interacting with TC (written before AM had TC support),
but I most likely will include some samples on how I connect the
ordering process to the payment processor.
–
Benjamin C.
http://www.bencurtis.com/
http://www.tesly.com/ – Collaborative test case management
http://www.agilewebdevelopment.com/ – Resources for the Rails community
No, you answered that well
Thanks
Stuart