3 comments about PHP Reference: Beginner to Intermediate PHP5.

1. I kept getting stuck forgetting little things when coding and I like to get away from my desk a lot, so carrying a 500 page all inclusive book didn't work for me, but this fit the bill. It doesn't have everything in PHP in it, and that's a good thing, because it makes it more portable and fits 95% of my needs. Incredibly handy.



2. The examples are clear for beginners and easy to follow. Even functions I've never tried to understand before when looking on php.net. As I've started looking into object-orientated programming, I wish this book covered that as well, but I guess that would be more advanced.



3. From the very first page, the author of this book lets us know exactly its purpose - to act as an off-line reference to the hundred or so domestic PHP functions one might use in the course of writing software, and a couple of their lesser-used variants.
   
   One of my favorite parts was the list of related functions below each description: this allows you to hyperlink your way around the book in a more semantic way than simply reading it front-to-back.
   
   This is certainly not a book just for beginners, because I wouldn't consider output buffer functions to be used by beginners (if you don't know what I mean when I say ob_start() or ob_flush(), then you should probably pick up a copy).
   
   This is the kind of book you should throw in your laptop bag as you get started on a new project, or keep on the shelf of your cubicle. Think about which is faster - tabbing back and forth between your browser window with the current page you're testing, and your text editor, AND the php.net site, or just having a small reference book next to your keyboard.
   
   Also consider your ability to make notes next to functions about your own personal tricks and experiences - I always find myself digging back into my own code as a reference, but if you just had this paper version to carry with you everywhere, you could save yourself a lot of time by not having to grep through your code.
   
   Completely worth your time and money.

5 comments about Upgrading to PHP 5.

1. This is a fantastic book. I frequently find that when an existing developer buys a book, he/she has to sort through all the garbage review in the beginning. This book assumes you are a competent PHP4 programmer. Then it takes you step by step through new PHP5 syntax and features that are unique to PHP5. It reviews and explains Object Oriented Programming (OOP), then discusses a variety of PHP5-only concepts, like SimpleXML and SQLite.
   
   I recently installed a PHP5 server and this book has been by my side since. All PHP4 developers who expect to use PHP5 within the next year or so should really have a copy of this book handy.



2. Being fairly proficient on PHP 4 but looking for more info on version 5, the idea of getting books on PHP 5 that, once again, starts from scratch wasn't exciting at all. This book instead was exactly what I needed, it assume you know PHP 4 and covers only the new features with a good amount of details and a bunch of useful suggestions for code migration. The only reason I don't give it 5 stars is that in the chapters covering OOP and DOM the author try to explain the new functionalities but also attempt to throw in the mix more generic info on this two topics. The end results are somewhat mixed, the coverage of PHP 5 is, in my opinion, very good, but the material about OOP and DOM instead aren't up to the rest and does more harm than good.



3. A very good choice. PHP5 is a new wave in dynamic web development. It dramaticly improved the handeling of classes and objects. This little book is your quick and easy to use refference of objects, methods, variables, scopes, functions. At Procreative Designs (procreative.ca), the company I work for this one was distributed all over our web development department at the beginning of last month. I personally find this book really handy and useful. Previously I owned PHP4 Refference and it always served me well. Overall its a great choice for quick refference.



4. The author does a great job summarizing common PHP characteristics and elaborating on PHP 5 improvements, with plenty of well-chosen code examples. Well suited for the established PHP programmer making the transition to PHP 5. For those starting out, use "Learning PHP 5" instead.



5. I own a sizable collection of O'Reilly books and have found them to in general be very well written and useful. "Upgrading to PHP 5" continues this tradition superbly.
   
   This book is _not_ for new PHP coders; the vast majority of the text assumes good familiarity with PHP 4.x. If you have this familiarity then you will find this book to be a thorough and well-organized primer on the many new features in the new PHP.
   
   The first chapter merely lists the major areas that have changed in the latest PHP, each of which roughly corresponds to a chapter in the book.
   
   Major enhancement to the OOP facilities of PHP are appropriately discussed in the next chapter. Unfortunately, this is probably the most clumsily written chapter due a strange desire to educate the reader in OOP basics (about the only place in the book where this mistake is committed). The result is a schism that imposes redundancy in the material while simultaneously making it unduly hard to locate specific topics.
   
   Thankfully the subsequent two chapters (on the new MySQL interface and the SQLite database) are uniformly well-written. Especially useful is a (perhaps oddly-situated) section on migration strategies from a PHP 4/MySQL 4.0 platform to a PHP 5/MySQL 4.1 platform.
   
   A chapter on XML follows, but I did not read it in great detail since my applications tend to not require it, so other reviewers are likely to provide greater insights here.
   
   Iterators, yet another feature completely new to PHP 5, are covered next. Unlike much of the conventional PHP fare (even OOP) this topic really does require understanding of rather abstract concepts (especially when debugging the RecusrsiveIterator interface). For this reason, while clearly written it may take hobbiests some time to take this material to heart.
   
   The new error-handling functions are introduced next. I think that the chapter could have benefited from a little more discussion; Trachtenberg seems to think providing code samples is almost self-explanatory. At the end of the day, though, the chapter does its job.
   
   The chapter on streams and filters is another one that I barely perused, so I defer to other reviewers on this topic.
   
   The penultimate chapter provides a very cursory evaluation of a handful of extensions to PHP. While certainly useful to the practicing PHP programmer they are covered in so brief a manner that you will need a separate text to implement them meaningfully. But this chapter does give enough information to at least evaluate the extensions' potential usefulness in an application.
   
   Trachtenberg concludes with an example PHP application. I do not like such examples in books - between space limitations and the complexity of real life this and other examples feel too... contrived... to be worthwhile. But I understand that it is included practically as canon, and do not fault the author for its inclusion.
   
   So, all things considered, this text covers the changes in PHP 5 in detail in a surprisingly brief 300 pages (and small page footprint). A worthy addition to a book collection, provided you already have general PHP reference available.

No comments about PHP: A BEGINNER'S GUIDE (Beginner's Guide (Osborne Mcgraw Hill)).

5 comments about Building Online Communities with phpBB 2.

1. So I went ahead and got this book, just because I am a phpBB fiend. To be honest I was not expecting much out of it. I figured there is not much about phpBB you can write about. However I was pleasantly surprised. This book is a great resource for both the beginner and more advanced users. I learned a couple cool tricks that I did not know before.
   
   For the beginner, it is a great step by step instruction on getting up and running, even explaining how to install MODs and templates. Many of the questions asked in the support forum at phpbb.com are answered in the book, there would be far fewer support posts if people read this book first.
   
   For the more advanced user it is a great reference book. It contains everything you need to know for making a new template. It has a lot of great reference charts like what files do what, and the database structure. It also has a pretty good chapter on custom programing complete with references to many of the variables and functions phpBB makes available.
   
   The only complaint I have is the price. But I feel all computer books are overpriced.



2. phpBB book covers topics for beginners to advanced users, if you want to jumpstart or customize your forum, this book is for you. Authors went through almost every features of phpBB.
   
   I specially like their writing style and user friendly examples. The installation, requirement before installation and fixing problems (that may occur sometime) after installation and covered well.
   
   If you are a moderator, it's time for you to rock. Administrative features are described well. It also describes administrator roles and tasks.
   
   Developing mods and Hacks, customization of themes seems so much intersting to me. Authors did a great job! I really like this book very much.



3. "Building on line Communities with phpBB2" is one of the few technical books on its kind that keeps up with what it promises. That is to offer "practical guidance for someone to get the most from phpBB".
   
   The book provides practical examples and hands on advice on issues like installation and configuration, administration, development of themes and styles, creation of MOD's and more.
   
   Beginners with basic technical knowledge will benefit the most since they will be able to start deploying their on line community after the first couple of chapters.
   
   As a teacher and consultant to several businesses and organizations i have found this book to be a valuable resource to anyone aiming to build and grow an on line community



4. The authors assume the reader has a fairly sophisticated level of general computer knowledge. If you are not comfortable roaming around the directory structure of your computer then this isn't for you.
   
   After that caveat, the authors want you to also download and configure other [free] software that is not directly related to phpbb, but aids in the installation and management of phpbb. If there are problems with this software it is left to you to solve them using any available resources - usually FAQ's and other help files from whence the free software came.
   
   As for the ease of use - The authors needed a good technical author and editor. There are assumptions made that you should know some piece of information that is either left out or glossed over in this text. In my experience, good, complete step-by-step procedures are always spelled out in detail in a beginners book. Not so here.
   
   The index seems to be woefully lacking in detail. Major topics are covered, but you still have to search through individual pages on those topics to find esoteric specifics.
   
   The above criticism notwithstanding, within two hours of the book's delivery I was able to troubleshoot and repair a nagging problem on the board I am setting up.
   
   So the technical information is there, just do not expect this to be a beginners text. It ain't "phpBB for Dummies!"



5. This book is typical of computer books today, more fluff, half the book is about how to use PhpBB, a fourth is dedicated to a very few of the nuts and bolts of making Modifications to a template to make it met your needs. It as well as a lot of COMPUTER books, is closer to a sham and is a shame for the price. Save your money, I wish there was a book that would definitively tell you what you need to REALLY modify a base template, let alone how to build one from scratch. The back cover like lots of computer books offers to show you the way to meaningful insight on the subject, but alas is to get you to part with your dollars for naught. IF any one knows of a GOOD overview of this subject and a better book please give us poorer( for buying the book) souls a hint.

5 comments about PHP: Your Visual Blueprint for Creating Open Source, Server-Side Content.

1. This book is a must have reference to PHP programming. It's a bit difficult to read, but it's great to have around. If you are an absoulte beginer looking to learn PHP, this isn't your book right away...wait a couple of months and then buy it.



2. This thing was the best computer book that I have ever purchased. The way it was layed out was the easiest I've ever had to learn anything in computers...and I'm a network engineer, and have been for 10 years.
   
   Great book...get it!



3. Perfect for a newbie programmer. I had more trouble installing PHP than using the book.



4. After a long search and 3 PHP books later, I have finally found something that was perfectly structured and EASY TO UNDERSTAND. If you are looking to learn PHP fast, start with this book. 4 stars instead of 5 only because its a bit dated, though still an excelent foundation.



5. I bought this book several years ago for my son when he was in high school. Since then I've kept it in work and it's been borrowed many times by ASP and Java programmers looking to broaden their knowledge, modify existing systems or to customized any of the many PHP based applications and frameworks that are available on the internet.
   It's a great book to learn what is still one of the most commonly used language on the web.

5 comments about How to Do Everything with PHP and MySQL (How to Do Everything).

1. If you want to work directly with HTML, PHP, and SQL without extra tools like PEAR, Smarty, Dreamweaver, etc., you may like this book. For small projects that do not need to be pretty and especially for learning how the code all works together, I like the approach of having the SQL, HTML, and PHP all on one page for a change. I am using the examples to convert an old ASP/Access project to PHP/MySQL and find the examples helpful.



2. I skimmed through this book once, and I read the reviews here. I thought this book could not have been that bad. It is a well structured book (from reading the Titles and SubTitles). Then I started reading it in details - lucky I borrowed this book from the library.
   
   This book started off so well. It promises "best practices", yet delivers very bad coding habits and taking shortcuts. The book outlines and titles were well designed, but the details were nothing more than, "Hay, here is the syntax, this is the usage plus some simple examples..., and you can use this to design database." Nothing that I couldn't find from the online PHP manual, and probably with better examples. Functions and keywords used were never explained properly. Its like, "Kid, now that I taught you addition, multiplication, subtraction and division.... You should be able to go out and solve the 2nd law of Thermodynamics because all mathematics built upon plus and minus."
   
   Not only that you can't do "Everything" reading this book, having read it I think I know less PHP.
   
   This book reflect badly on the publisher as well, I'd think twice buying similar book from them.



3. In the Introduction, the author claims that this book "is targeted at novice web developers". And true enough, the first two chapters guide the novice how to install and configure MySQL, PHP and Apache. Obviously these chapters have been written or thoroughly edited by an English speaking person. Then, from third chapter, the geek takes over ! He writes assuming that the reader has prior knowledge of PHP and MySQL, using terminology that he does not explain. In almost all chapters, instead of elaborating the subject under discussion, he suggests that the reader should look up the recommended website.
   
   I thoroughly recommend any book on PHP/MySQL written by any author other than Vikram Vaswani. I did not learn anything new from this book, which is "the worst" computer book I have ever read. How can any reputable House publish a book that consistently urges the reader to seek knowledge from elsewhere ?



4. Material is poorly presented. Author assumes programming knowledge on your part. You are often left floundering, wondering what the author meant. Found a much better book at my local library but it was, as you can imagine, seriously out of date. I have made it 1/3 of the way through this book and am considering tossing it in the trash.



5. Great book. It really got me started when I first had started my trek on learning PHP. It goes more in depth than other books I had read before. The only thing I would recommend is a better chapter on error coding and security. Over all I recommend this book.

1 comments about Apache, MySQL, and PHP Web Development All-in-One Desk Reference for.

1. I consider myself as pretty much a patient problem solver when I actually encounter problems. But as I begin to use this book as a reference book to build my first website based on MySQL, PHP, and many other languages, I found myself getting seriously annoyed at the fact that this book offered me.
   
   That is not meant to say this book is a horrible book. First of all, as this book is published as "For Dummies series", the author "is obliged" to write as you do not much about anything, though the author himself most likely did not incline toward the obligation. And, as it is written on book covers, this book truly covers the seven topics in one, and each of the topics is explained in detail and in plain language to make you easy to understand.
   
   But despite of these positive sides, it is unfortunate that this book seriously needs revision. To remind you, this book is a book targetting toward beginners. At the same time, however, this book is also a book targetting toward those who are actually intending to use PHP and other applications mentioned here to build a website. But before I mention what are the problems with the book, I want to let you know something about PHP. Those who already know or do not bother to know about it, just skip over to 2nd paragraph following this.
   
   For those who do not know, PHP is a language that can easily frustrate you if you make a single, minimal mistake such as: replacing a single quote as a double quote, absence/addition of a a blank line or a space, etc. To make things worse, when you run the PHP page with errors in web, it will give you errors that is not only unpleasant but almost entirely useless. I first used Notepad to write/edit the scripts, but lated I had to rely on Dreamweaver to make edits less frustrating -- but with no significant improvement. And for those who do not have these expensive IDE softwares, you will probably spend hours to see what have done wrong in your script.
   
   Now, continuing with the problem with the book... The author makes a serious mistake by leaving incorrectly written scripts on several portions of his book. For example, these is this PHP script written on Chapter VI, Chapter 7, "Creating a Username System for Your Website", that shows you entire scripts for useraccess.php file. The file itself is about 151 lines wrong(I say "about" because the script itself really depends on how you design the script), and there are 7 other files, either html or php, that works in conjunction with this file. By running the script, I got an error message that is basically useless. I ran the program in numbers of times more again, and I later found that the problem was actually in the book: there were 19 "{" sign but only 18 "}" sign in the script! I still ran in a couple more problems again after fixing the mistake. In any case, the book makes several mistakes that can guarantee you to get frustrated unless you are already a programming gru.
   
   In addition, while the author goes each portion pretty extensively, he somehow seems to assume that you read about previous parts of Books before you goes to next Book. What I mean by that is, for example, when he mentions about objects in PHP, he actually wants you to go back and read the parts in Perl to make you understand it. I do not think that is not really a good approach for beginners who will read this book because some users simply do not want to spend extra time to read over another books mentioning about Perl or Apache when they just wants to learn PHP. And often, I strongly felt that there needs to be more explanations regarding each issue, and I visited his website to see whether there is maybe a forum or a tutorial set up regarding the book. What I only found from his websites is articles regarding another computer language C, download search that is basically useless for me, and, oh, some Google and other affiliate ads to make himself some money. Nice...
   
   So, to conclude, I cannot really say that this book is a great book for beginners. Maybe, you will find that this book is not even an okay book, or maybe you will. However, what I suggest to you is that, if you buy this book from a bookstore, be sure to have a mind to learn through trials-and-errors with frustration rather than just using scripts written from the book.

3 comments about PHP: The Complete Reference.

1. As a software developer, I primarily work with the ASP.NET technology and have been learning to apply Ajax to my work. A small segment of my work is with PHP/MySQL. I picked-up this book at Barnes & Noble (my Sunday library and Starbucks experience) and found the subject of Ajax to be very well explained.
   
   I purchased this book solely for the Chapters 12 and 13 coverage of Ajax and have found it to be worth the purchase price alone. I look forward to reading the rest of the book as a refresher for my PHP development.



2. This book is okay as a beginning reference. The title may give the impression that it's a book you'll want to keep on your shelf and return to frequently for years to come. That probably won't be the case for most readers who go on to write a lot of PHP, so a better title might have been "Getting Started with PHP", or something like that. The banner on the back of the book, which says "Your One-Stop Guide to Web Development with PHP", is a lot more predictive of the book's contents.
   
   It contains a lot of fluff that fills way more pages than are justified for the amount of information given, such as examples built-up in stages, leading to a lot of needlessly redundant example code. This might make sense for complex examples, but the examples in this book are all very simple, so the extra use of paper is wasteful.
   
   Personally, I don't like the author's tendency to follow his own explanations with expressions like "Not bad!", "Nice!", and "Pretty good!". I appreciate when authors use a conversational tone to some extent (Scott Meyers is the best at this, I think), but doing this constantly throughout the book goes too far for my taste. Others might enjoy this style of writing though.
   
   I would say this book seems to be targeted toward readers who are absolutely new to programming. If you're coming from any kind of programming background at all, or like to be challenged, then you might not be very satisfied with this book. One good thing is that it's so simple and the examples take up so much space, you can read the whole thing in just a few hours.
   
   I've also noticed quite a few typos, even in the example code (e.g. "close" where they meant "clone"), but I don't see an erratum posted on the McGraw-Hill website yet. I'm sure that's because the book was published only recently. The source code is all there though, as advertised. Still, it would have been nice if they'd done a better job of editing the text.
   
   Maybe the overall nature of this book is consistent with "The Complete Reference" series by McGraw-Hill. This was the first title I'd read in that series, so I had no certain expectations. In the future, I'll know better what to expect from "The Complete Reference" books.



3. PHP, The Complete Reference may be a good book to start learning from. In addition, it does touch on most of the major topics.
   
   However, calling it "Complete" is a joke. I have been writing software for over 40 years, and this is the first language "reference" book I have found that does not fully describe the built-in functions supported by the language. For example, on pages 82-84 the author lists about 100 string functions in a 2 column table. The first column is the function name, and the 2nd column is a single phrase that states the purpose of the function. No syntax is shown, no arguments, no return value information and no usage information. In the few pages that follow, there are in-line examples of a couple of the 90+ functions.
   
   The same is true for other groups of functions. Having to go online to find out information that should be in a "complete reference" obviates the need for a book. At the price charged for this book, you'd be better off using the abundant information available online.

1 comments about Extending and Embedding PHP (Developer's Library).

1. I purchased this book based on an immediate need at my job, and have since created two nice PHP extensions. I found it to be extremely helpful at getting started into an otherwise poorly documented area of PHP and the Zend API. It does lack depth in some areas, such as PHP5 objects. I found that consulting the source code of several existing PHP extensions was necessary to fill in some of these gaps.

5 comments about Php 4 Bible (Bible (Wiley)).

1. The first thing I noticed working through this book is that most of the examples are pointlessly complicated, and not even useful in the real world. There is no real layout to how functions are shown... you're given an example or two, and that's about it. Rarely do they give a detailed list of parameters, and how to properly use it. No appendix of functions for easy reference, either. The most disturbing problem is the glaring errors in the book. The biggest error is the assumption that register_globals is on, even though in recent versions of PHP it defaults to off. The code does not mention where this will matter, creating some very frustrating searches through the real PHP documentation on how to properly use a variable. I've noticed many other errors in the use of functions in the book. There is no errata on the website, either. This book is two years old, and shows it's age. Get a better PHP book... there's plenty of them.



2. At times this book looks as if it were written by consumate programmers that assume the reader has an extensive C++ background. At other times I felt it was irrelevant. Who would write the vapid little programs they use for examples? Like so many other manuals out there, the examples are not useful for the real world.

   A "Bible" should have a comprehensive introduction to the basics in the beginning. This book seems to blast past that in a hurry to get to databases and other subjects.

   Many times something new is presented and not clarified or clarified later. An example is the modulus ( % ), they place it in an example, and then two paragraphs later they tell you what it is for and not to worry - it's all in a later chapter. An awful lot of things are brought up this way. It makes for herky jerky reading. Nothing is linear.

   As a reference, it's not very good. An eample would be the modulus above. I think it and other math operators should all be introduced in one place. Introduce it as a basic concept and then you can use it later. They cover math operators and then later tell you there are more math operators. The appendices in the back are flimsy and useless. More meat would be nice.

   In chapter 3 getting started, nothing about the installation on my PC went according to the book. The directions for setting up Windows 2000 were outdated and I had to make some guesses. The latest version of PHP does not install anything like the book says. Ya, I found out after I bought this, that they had just released a new version of the book. Unfortunatly I bought this for a class I was taking. I am stuck with it.

   It surprises me that a book on a language that can be installed on so many platforms has so little in it about installation issues. The size of the book is much smaller than the JavaScript Bible. How can that be? It's a much richer language.




3. Very disappointed with this book. I have bought several other Bible series books and was very happy with them. I have had this book for a while now and everytime I run into a problem I grab the book and it gives me no help. The index is very poor ... you can't even look up a simple function like urlencode cause it isn't there! This is probably fine for a beginner but that is it cause once you get going with PHP there is no way you can use this book as a reference!!!



4. As big, extensive and detailed as this book may be, it only develops the strict necessary notions about the PHP language to allow for working on a professional basis. The "caching" topics, always important as a technique for enhancing site performances, might be more extensively developped and the book would gain in going a little deeper into templates buiders, like "Smarty" which it mentions, anyway. Thanks to the authors, I could in just one book, written with the genius of pedagogy that pertains to american authors, get all the necessary notions to understand complex structures involving Apache, Smarty, MySql and Php. Good Job !



5. This book proved to be the perfect resource for me. I am familiar with Basic, Pascal, C++, Actionscript, Lingo, and Javascript, but PHP was my first server-side language. This book is great for those new to programming, but especially helpful resource for me as I just needed the PHP syntax and an overview of the server-side workflow.