In 1999, at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Philip Greenspun started what eventually became class 6.171, Software Engineering for Internet Applications. The target of the course was nothing less than to teach students how to build Amazon.com.

This book takes that goal one step further. We think a decent programmer shouldn't need a half-year university class to learn how to build an e-commerce site. One book should be enough. It's an ambitious goal, for sure. But by taking advantage of the expressiveness and productivity offered by Ruby and Rails, we believe it's possible.

In this book, you will find all you need to know to become comfortable building next-generation e-commerce sites using Ruby on Rails. Although basic technologies and techniques are outlined, this book is not a primer on Ruby or Rails, nor is it a reference guide. It's a practical hands-on demonstration of how to build an actual e-commerce site that uses core Rails concepts and technologies, such as the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern and ActiveRecord (the object-relational mapping system in Rails), as well as other web technologies such as Ajax.

Beginning Ruby on Rails E-Commerce is written for those who enjoy learning by doing and seeing an application take shape, rather than spending nights reading theory. We discuss innovative and exciting new concepts as they apply to the task at hand.

Ultimately, we hope this book will communicate the passion we have for Rails. As experienced and practicing web developers, Rails has saved us a lot of headaches and tedious work, and we think it can do the same for you. Rails put the enjoyment back in programming for us. Our raison d'être behind writing this book is to share this love with you.