Programming Cocoa with Ruby: Create Compelling Mac Apps Using RubyCocoa
About this Book
This is a book for the Ruby programmer who抯 never written a Mac app before. Through this hands-on tutorial, you抣l learn all about the Cocoa framework for programming on Mac OS X. Join the author抯 journey as this experienced Ruby programmer delves into the Cocoa framework right from the beginning, answering the same questions and solving the same problems that you抣l face.
Together you抣l build a single application that threads throughout the book, and it抯 not a toy. You抣l cover topics that may not be the flashiest parts of Cocoa, but they抮e ones you抣l need to know to create robust, feature-rich applications for yourself. And you抣l learn more than just Cocoa and RubyCocoa, you抣l get first-hand effective agile development practices. You抣l see test-first development of user-interface code, little domain-specific languages that take advantage of Ruby features, and other Rubyish tricks.
At the end of the book, you抣l be ready to write a real Mac OS X application that can be distributed to real users.
Contents and Extracts
- Full Table of Contents
- Introduction
- How Do We Get This Thing Started
- A First Realistic App
- Working with Interface Builder and XCode
- One Good App Observes Another
- Reshaping Fenestra
- A Better GUI
- Decoupled Controllers
- Notifications Connect Decoupled Objects
- More Expressive Code
- Project Mechanics
- Bundling Gems and Libraries with Your App
- Project Organization, Builds, and Your Favorite Editor
- Declarative Data Handling
- Persistent User Preferences
- Creating A Preference Panel in a New Nib
- Implementing a Preference Panel with Cocoa Bindings
- Setting Up Bindings with Code
- Fun with Tables
- Prologue: Folders and Tests
- Selections and Editing
- Buttons in Tables
- A Formatter with Two Wrinkles
- Picking Files with Open Panels
- Drag and Drop
- Epilogue: A Wonderful World of Tests
- Wrapping Up
- Fit and Finish
- Adding Help
- Document-Based Applications
- MacRuby
- Reference
- The Objective-C Bridge and Bridge Metadata
- The Underpinnings of Cocoa Bindings
About the Author
Brian Marick learned Ruby in 2001 because Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt, original authors of Programming Ruby, wouldn抰 let him off a shuttle bus until he said he would. He抯 been programming in it ever since, and he抯 made a special effort to teach it to software testers. His previous book is Everyday Scripting with Ruby, which began as a tutorial for those very testers.
He抯 not a Ruby programmer by trade. He makes most of his money as a consultant in the Agile methodologies. (After getting off the shuttle bus, he was one of the authors of the 揗anifesto for Agile Software Development�.)
