Taste of Rails

Michael Hartl has written a wonderful book The Ruby on Rails Tutorial that starts with the basics and then goes very in depth. If you've never played with Rails at all and you're interested in a taste of what it's like this is a great resource. Chapters 1 and 2 walk you through the steps of creating a very basic rails app. It really helped me wrap my head around what Rails is and gave me a taste of the structure. It also walked me through getting my app up onto Heroku and live on the internet - which was super exciting to me even when the total of my app was "hello world" :) I really like the way he gives an overall picture of something and then delves into the details. If you've already had some experience with Rails, you could skip the first couple chapters.

The Ruby on Rails Tutorial by Michael Hartl

Note: The PDf & ebook versions with solutions $39.00 but to read the book online is free. I found that there are a lot of people who have already gone through this process so there are lots of coattails to ride out there. I was able to find resources to help me through problems I've faced, so so far I haven't found the solutions necessary and being on a budget I've gone with the free online version and I haven't felt like I needed anything else it's suited me well.