Make clones of some of the best applications on the Web using the dynamic and object-oriented features of Ruby
Build your own custom social networking, URL shortening, and photo sharing websites using Ruby
Deploy and launch your custom high-end web applications
Learn what makes popular social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook tick
Understand features of some of the most famous photo sharing and social networking websites

A web mashup is a new type of web application that uses data and services from one or more external sources to build entirely new and different web applications. Web mashups usually mash up data and through other partnership agreements. The external sources that a mashup uses are known as mashup APIs.

This book shows you how to write web mashups using Ruby on Rails— the new web application development framework. The book has seven real-world projects and each project is described in a methodical step-by-step way, showing how you can write a web mashup from the ground up.

APIs covered in the book

This book covers: Google Maps API, Yahoo geocoding services, Geocoder.us geocoding services, Geocoder.ca geocoding services, Hostip.info, Google Spreadsheet, EditGrid, Clickatell, Interfax, Amazon ECS, Sparklines, Facebook, Indeed, DayLife, Technorati, Futef, WebserviceX Currency Convertor, Weatherbug, Google Bases, Geonames, Flickr, Paypal, Google Calendar, Google Account Authentication, Google Data, and Google Spreadsheet Data.

Ruby is quickly becoming a favourite among developers who need a simple, straight forward, portable programming language. Ruby is ideal for quick and easy object-oriented programming such as processing text files or performing system management. Having been compared with other programming languages such as Perl, Python, PCL, Java, Eiffel, and C++; Ruby is popular because of its straight forward syntax and transparent semantics.

This book shows you how to write web mashups using Ruby on Rails—the new web application development framework. The book has seven real-world projects—the format of each project is similar, with a statement of the project, discussion of the main protocols involved, an overview of the API, and then complete code for building the project. You will be led methodically through concrete steps to build the mashup, with asides to explain the theory behind the code.

This book is an attempt to bridge the ever-increasing gap between the market demand and the availability of Ruby expertise. The first step to becoming an expert is to get an in-depth knowledge of Ruby, and this is exactly what this book has to offer. It begins with the basics of scripting and moves seamlessly over to the programming intricacies.

Along with conceptual information, this book also will provide extensive practical exercises to allow readers to gain valuable real-life exposure in creating different types of applications.

The aim of this book is to make learning an enjoyable and energizing process.

Building a complete Ruby on Rails business application from start to finish

* Create a non-trivial, business-focused Rails application
* Solve the real-world problems of developing and deploying Rails applications in a business environment
* Apply the principles behind Rails development to practical real-world situations