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The Bottom Line

If you use or are planning to use TurboGears to develop web applications or a customized content management system, this book will help you do so quickly and with understanding. As long as you have progressed through a beginning tutorial on Python, you should be able to benefit from reading Rapid Web Applications with TurboGears. TurboGears represents the synergistic union of multiple web technologies.

As such, it is not only more powerful than its competitors, it is also more flexible. By treating each of TurboGears' parts, the authors enable the user to use TurboGears to its fullest.



Pros

• Addressed toward the intermediate and above
• Comprehensive discussion of TurboGears' internals
• Explains the logic of TurboGears
• Addresses both SQLObject and SQLAlchemy
• Excellent index

Cons

• Only two sample applications
• A bit dated (written for Python 2.4)
• Treats internationalization as being of secondary importance
• Treats testing tools as secondary

Description

• Paced well for the advanced beginner or newly intermediate
• Completeness of the discussions are helpful for learning and review
• As TurboGears will shift from SQLObject to SQLAlchemy, the authors treat both

Guide Review - Rapid Web Apps with TurboGears

The book has seven major parts. The first three parts ("TurboGears Fundamentals", "Building a Simple TurboGears Application", "Exploring a Real World TurboGears Application") offer an overview and two tutorials for developing TurboGears applications.

By the end of the third section, one is more comfortable with how TurboGears performs.

The second three parts ("SQLObject and TurboGears Models", "TurboGears View Technologies", "CherryPy and TurboGears Controller Technologies") gives a detailed discussion of the several technologies behind TurboGears. The first two of these address how TurboGears interfaces with SQLObject. The third looks at the rest of the technology suite on which TurboGears relies.

Finally, the last section, "TurboGears Extras", highlights a bevy of tools that are useful for administering TurboGears sites. Unfortunately, this section also contains a seemingly relegated chapter on internationalization. As 65% of all web users do not speak English as their primary language, one would expect greater prominence to be given to Unicode and other issues of internationalization.

The final two chapters in this section address testing and security. Perhaps the section is mistitled, but one would expect debugging tools and security features to have greater prominence, as well. After all, the first is a critical part of the software development process, and the latter is an integral part of any modern web application.

This book is the most comprehensive discussion of TurboGears to-date. While written in part for the intermediate developer, it also serves as a reference for more advanced developers. If you develop web applications, you should look at TurboGears. This book will be invaluable in making your assessment and implementing a TurboGears-based solution.