# Newbie questions

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/newbie-questions/82889>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [January 22, 2007, 4:48am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/newbie-questions/82889 "2007-01-22T04:48:02Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![jbell38](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/edb3f5/32.png) [@jbell38](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jbell38)\
**Post date:** [January 22, 2007, 4:48am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/newbie-questions/82889/1 "2007-01-22T04:48:02Z")

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I am trying to work through the Wrox Beginning Ruby on Rails and have a  
few specific questions about the examples in the book.

My questions for this forum are:  
Is that a good book to start with?

and

Where is the best place to post newbie questions?

In case this is a good place to ask:

I am running Mandriva/Mandrake 10.2. My input forms are sending extra  
characters in the GET query to the controller app, and I don’t know if  
that is my Linux install or some other problem. THe extra characters  
work like this:

Input.html is supposed to send a request to

This ends up in the GET as “/%5Clook/%5Cat”

I have scoured the example text, and entered different examples with the  
same results. Any help appreciated.

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**Author:** ![jbell38](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/edb3f5/32.png) [@jbell38](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jbell38)\
**Post date:** [January 22, 2007, 12:18pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/newbie-questions/82889/2 "2007-01-22T12:18:18Z")

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I have not used the Wrox book, but certainly Why’s guide is the  
accepted introduction to ruby, and the Agile Dev with Rails book is the  
best way to be learning up-to-date stuff with 1.2.

As for this problem, %5 is a url-encoded backslash. Seems like a string  
escaping problem… I would be curious to back-trace where it comes  
from. Is the backslash in the form tag on the original page? Is it in  
the url visible in the browser? Or does it just show up in the params  
array? I suspect it’s in the original page, in which case it would help  
if you could post the code generating the form.

Hope that helped,

Adam

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**Author:** ![jbell38](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/edb3f5/32.png) [@jbell38](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jbell38)\
**Post date:** [January 22, 2007, 3:44pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/newbie-questions/82889/3 "2007-01-22T15:44:32Z")

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Hi Adam, thanks for the reply

I am not sure how to trace this, but the form tag in the original  
input.html is exactly as shown in the original post: . I tried it with back slash and forward slash too, and  
both generated the same GET query including the extra “%5C” characters,  
which shows up on the console as the output of the webrick processes.  
If I manually entered the query string the template responded properly.  
How do you look inside this action?

I suppose I could skip ahead and use shortcuts or change it to POST but  
I thought I better get this basic stuff down first.

Adam wrote:

> I have not used the Wrox book, but certainly Why’s guide is the  
> accepted introduction to ruby, and the Agile Dev with Rails book is the  
> best way to be learning up-to-date stuff with 1.2.
> 
> As for this problem, %5 is a url-encoded backslash. Seems like a string  
> escaping problem… I would be curious to back-trace where it comes  
> from. Is the backslash in the form tag on the original page? Is it in  
> the url visible in the browser? Or does it just show up in the params  
> array? I suspect it’s in the original page, in which case it would help  
> if you could post the code generating the form.
> 
> Hope that helped,
> 
> Adam

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jbell38](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/edb3f5/32.png) [@jbell38](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jbell38)\
**Post date:** [January 24, 2007, 4:29pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/newbie-questions/82889/4 "2007-01-24T16:29:56Z")

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Adam wrote:

> When you say it is in the input.html, do you mean the view template on  
> the server, or the page that is actually sent to the browser? We can  
> help you best if you post the following: the exact code in this  
> controller action, the exact code in the view for this action, and the  
> exact html which gets generated by the server.
> 
> On Jan 22, 10:44 pm, Jeff B. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)

Thanks Adam.

I am trying to upgrade to Ruby 1.8.6 now to eliminate that as a problem.  
I have downloaded the code from Wrox to create a parallel dev folder and  
see what happens with that. If either of these approaches don’t help, I  
will be back here with verbose listings, etc.

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**Author:** ![jbell38](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/edb3f5/32.png) [@jbell38](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jbell38)\
**Post date:** [January 24, 2007, 6:26am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/newbie-questions/82889/5 "2007-01-24T06:26:30Z")

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When you say it is in the input.html, do you mean the view template on  
the server, or the page that is actually sent to the browser? We can  
help you best if you post the following: the exact code in this  
controller action, the exact code in the view for this action, and the  
exact html which gets generated by the server.

On Jan 22, 10:44 pm, Jeff B. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)