5 comments about The PHP Anthology: Object Oriented PHP Solution, Volume 1.

1. I have been reading alot of books on PHP 5's new object features. I picked up this book hoping it would meet somewhere between "Object-Oriented PHP" by Peter Lavin and "PHP Objects, Patterns, and Practices". The next day I ended up giving the book to my co-worker. I started reading it on the train and was completely disappointed! The entire object oriented chapter is written for PHP 4 besides one blurb that mentions refrences won't be needed in PHP 5. This book is in serious need of a new edition!
   
   If you are beginning PHP programming this book is just one of the hundreds of books that cover the same common issues. If you are looking for the latest PHP has to offer, this isn't your book.



2. Having built Object Oriented solutions for over nine years in C++ and Delphi, PHP had me confused by the nature of its object system. I was unable to find suitable information on the web on such issues as the PHP object lifecycle, applicability of patterns (entire section on patterns), how to handle the looser typing mechanism (automated tests), and how to optimize for performance. This book solved ALL of my problems!!!
   
   The text is simple and exceedingly practical but far from boring! In fact, I was so excited by how clearly the information was conveyed that I did in fact read both volumes I and II cover to cover - TWICE (though you can use them as reference works). Not only that but the texts significantly increased my respect for PHP; from gruding acceptance of its use to having some genuine affection for the language and appreciation for its power.
   
   If you are completely new to development these books (I and II) are for. If you are an advanced developer with years of OO experience and are just getting started in PHP then you will be relieved by what you find here.
   
   All of that aside, I will say that there were a few instances where the author kludged the definition of an OO concept to make it fit within the PHP framework. There are some substantial ways in which PHP 4 just does not hold up as an OO language (PHP 5 fixes them). However, the author really had no choice in the matter because if he had tried to explain the formal OO concept, then PHP 4's interpretation of that concept and how to implement he would have lost 90% of his audience. So even this one complaint ends with praise - the author skillfully sacrifices detail only where necessary to increase the palatibility of the materal.
   
   Great job! Great book!
   
   Once again, regardless of your skill level if you are going to be doing any halfway serious PHP work you NEED this series.



3. I use a lot of includes in php and wondered if I could more fruitfully use OOP. My conclusion was that includes can do just about everything OOP can do. The book's page-appearance is poor, huge blank rectangles with just a couple of tiny words on them take up two thirds of a page, there's gray tint over just the part of the code you most want to read, the type's too big, the code is clumsily commented so active code lines are hard to pick out. Altogether not a pleasant reading experience. And the instruction is not inspired. I never did get the point of OOP in PHP.



4. I liked this book because of its simplicity. Well written, easy to follow, and with a lot of practical examples.
   
   I was surprised when I received because I found it 'thin' (~400 pages but font is relatively big), but, as everything is explained to the point, It has the right number of pages for the right content.
   
   The book is focused in how to make objects work for you, it does not explore unnecessarily in detail how the objects presented get the work done. You can download the code, so you can take a look inside by yourself.
   
   Also, this book cover the basics of PHP PEAR.



5. the book is not a guide to learn PHP from scrath, but it is very good for new & old programmers.
   it's chapters includes all major aspects of the language & a lot of common problems, & that is very useful.

5 comments about Smarty PHP Template Programming And Applications.

1. Smarty. The title is just as short and simple as the book itself. The first few chapters cover why you would want to use Smarty. This has always been the biggest slowdown of Smarty adoption: why use a template language? Isn't PHP already a template language? Isn't Smarty slow? What does the workflow look like? All of these questions are covered in these first few chapters. (The speed of Smarty is covered at the end in more detail, too.)
   
   After that, the rest of the book covers the actual Smarty template language. There are two main sections that teach the reader: one section for template designers and one for programmers -- just like how the Smarty homepage is set up. Basically, each section covers the exact same material that's on the Smarty homepage, only in a more logical progression. Rather than a standard reference-manual format, these sections are laid out with several real-word projects and examples.
   
   If you're new to Smarty, or have thought about learning it, I would definitely buy this book. However, if you're already familiar with the language, you really won't gain anything new here -- except printed documentation, which is always nice. Overall, Smarty is a great book for beginners.



2. If you're looking for a good book on Smarty, this one should definitely be on your list. This book takes you through every feature that Smarty offers in an easy-to-understand and practical way, with plenty of clear and concise examples to make it even easier to understand.
   
   It doesn't matter if you're a developer who wants to start using Smarty or if you're a designer who has to start working with Smarty, this book is a great resource for both and thanks to a clear division in the book it's easy to learn about Smarty as a developer or designer.
   
   There aren't many negative things to say about this book, but it isn't perfect either. Sometimes things are explained multiple times, with might cause some slight annoyance, and in some cases parts of an example aren't explained at all, which leaves you wondering what something is used for.
   
   To sum it all up, this book is certainly worth the money, and I can definitely recommend it if you're looking to get started with Smarty.



3. No need to hide it, "Smarty PHP Template Programming and Application" is an excellent book!
   
   Whether you are graphic designer or developer, this book is for you, thanks to a clear separation of the needs.
   Every step is exposed in details : installation, utility and the way to work with Smarty is clearly explained.
   You can add to this a detailed explanation of the various built-in variables and methods, differents way for managing the cache, filters and plugins,... all this makes this book a very good one, covering from he most basic to the most advanced methods.
   
   Moreover, there's a complete chapter on "website internationalization" with Smarty.
   
   To summarize, and I guess you already understood, this is an excellent book that any developer/designer who works with Smarty must read.



4. You are looking for a simple solution to separate your PHP code from the graphics of your website? You work in a team composed of coders and graphists? Then you have already thought about templating!
   
   Without a doubt, Smarty currently is the best templating engine available on the market. It is not famous for its simplicity but for its completeness.
   
   This book is on the same page as the others I had the chance to read from the same editor (Packt Publishing). It was written for a wide public (from beginners to advanced) and it covers most of the subject. Thanks to this book, you will have the ability to quickly master Smarty and to use it during all your projects without many problems.
   
   The introduction does not only handle Smarty, but rather the templating philosophy. You will also find installation walkthroughs, structural and logical Smarty internal processes.
   The main part of the book is divided into two parts. The first is directed towards designers with, for the most part, creation of Template files and usage of Smarty functions. A whole chapter is dedicated to application debugging.
   The other section is aimed at programmers, with details and explanation on each variable or method used in Smarty. This section is really useful on the long term, since you can come back to it any time.
   
   You now have all the knowledge to start templating on your own, and you won't forget the experience you gained through explanations, step by step, as well as sources illustrating these pages.
   
   You can now go further using Smarty's power by reading the following chapters about caching, plugins usage, filters and internationalization of your website.
   
   To sum up, this is a very good book for those who are interested in Smarty and very useful for those who are already using it. But watch out: Smarty is not to be used in every website. I would like to highlight, however, that its use is far too complex to be used in a static website: you will need some dynamic components to notice any improvement. Actually, Smarty needs you to learn a new language: what you know how to do in PHP most probably has a Smarty equivalent, so that you will need a transition time.
   
   [...]



5. I found this book to be a good reference if you are not already familiar with Smarty. It gives you the basics but doesn't get too involved.
   I would recommend having some PHP experience first before you buy it.
   I bought it to be used as an additional programming help guide to work with X-Cart. It's been good for that.
   Overall, it's worth the price.

5 comments about php|architect's Guide to PHP Security|.

1. Best of the best of all other books i've read about PHP Security. Easily comprehensible (even for a frenchy like me), no bla-bla, explanations which are not limited to a surface layer but go deeply under the hood (Paranoid attitude says Milos), examples of code which are limpid, simple to understand, include, and implement ...
   The author have knowledge of the inner working procedure of PHP, and it makes the difference with others books or compilation of articles found on the Net. Yes, this book is thin, yes, it has only 10 chapters, and yes, i have found immediately what i was waiting for a long time.
   Buy it, steal it, hack it, but if you write PHP app, you must read this book.
   
   Four thumbs up (the hands and the feet)



2. This book was real helpful. I really didn't know much about the topics so I found it a good introduction. If you are even semi-knowledgeable about this area, I would recommend another book.



3. After a website of mine was hacked I decided I needed to be better informed about php/mysql security, so I bought this book. I now refer to it very frequently. It seems short but there's no fluff and it's right to the point. The author clearly understands the internals of php, apache and mysql very well. If you're writing php, this book is essential on your bookshelf.



4. As a programmer with 7 years experience, I already had a fair amount of knowledge about PHP security, but it was all self-taught. I will say that I was able to learn a few new things and pick up a few strategies from this book.
   
   Overall, I wouldn't say I was disappointed with the book, but I definitely wasn't impressed. There were numerous misspellings, typos, and (in a few cases) words missing altogether. With my knowledge I considered these typos to be fairly minor, but someone with less experience may become confused by a few of them.
   
   In one case, a variable in one of the coding examples was actually mis-keyed. If someone were to copy the example verbatim, it would not behave as expected. That type of error should never occur in a book like this.
   
   The various chapters do contain useful information, but the code examples are pretty lame. Don't buy this book if you're looking for specific, real-world, useful examples on how to implement your security measures, but if you already have enough PHP experience to figure out ways of implementing the *concepts* presented in this book, then it may be worthwhile picking up.
   
   Experienced PHP programmers with some security experience will probably find a few useful tidbits, and anyone looking to truly maximize the security of their web applications would definitely benenfit from the sheer number of concepts presented in this book. However, many PHP developers will likely agree that a number of the concepts presented are somewhat superfluous, or rendered obsolete by other concepts.
   
   In many cases the author will provide a concept for securing an application, provide an example of how to do it, and then proceed to explain why that method is NOT the best method to use. Someone looking for a quick-use reference manual of the most effective ways to secure your application will probably not enjoy this book.
   
   BOTTOM LINE: there's gotta be better books on PHP security available for beginners, intermediate developers, and professionals alike. Only buy this book if you're interested in a large number of concepts and don't care about clear and specific examples of real-world implementation.
   
   Advice to the Author/Publisher: Fix the typos and put the missing words back in! Expand on your code examples and provide more real-world application. Choose better naming conventions for your variables in your examples - no one wants to guess at what the variable "$e" represents, use "$elements" instead. Compile a chapter of "Top 10 security exploits and how to avoid them" using your recommended methods for the various exploits (or something similar). As it stands now, your readers not only have to work through the errors and the poor examples, they also have to decode which of your concepts are worth actually implementing, since so many of them have loopholes, provide other vulnerabilities, or simply "aren't enough" to truly secure the application.



5. Overall, an excellent resource for security. It's small size means that that topics are narrow enough to be digested and acted upon individually.

5 comments about Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 with ASP, ColdFusion, and PHP: Training from the Source.

1. I'll say something good first. I found the author to be well skilled in explaining the concepts as well as the procedure when using Dreamweaver 8. Each chapter is written like a good lesson plan, and takes you through the book task by task. I usually have to read more than one book on a technology because what one author fails to explain adequately, another explains very well. That is the case with this book, But don't buy this book.
   
   When I did run into a problem with the code in the book, I went to the website and found that there was no erata page or anything else for this book, the last update was for Dreamweaver MX or some previous version. So now I have to figure out on my own why the code in the book is giving me errors. Unforgivable.
   
   I also read "Foundation PHP for Dreamweaver 8", and of course it also had errata, but it was fully corrected on the accompanying site. I did not have the problems with the server as the other reviewer did, because I didn't use this book for it after reading about his problems. I used the Foundation book to set up the PHP/MySQL, and it worked just fine, although I haven't tested it on the remote server yet...
   
   Anyway if he's not going to support the book by listing errata on an accompanying site (that he references in the book), then don't bother buying the book.



2. Author Jeffrey Bardzell does a great job of explaining the ins-and-outs of ASP, ColdFusion, and PHP use within Dreamweaver 8 in MACROMEDIA DREAMWEAVER 8 WITH ASP, COLDFUSION, AND PHP: TRAINING FROM THE SOURCE. Not only does the book cover the subject matter in an easy-to-follow style, but examples and sample files are also provided on the CD that comes with the book. As a person who learns more by doing than by just simply reading about it or seeing it in a diagram, I found this feature to be very useful.
   
   MACROMEDIA DREAMWEAVER 8 WITH ASP, COLDFUSION, AND PHP: TRAINING FROM THE SOURCE was a great resource. Primarily, I used it to brush on PHP usage within Dreamweaver, and for this purpose the book certainly exceeded my every need! I've got PHP forms up and running on various client websites now, and would have had a much more difficult time building the complex forms without Bardzell's advice.
   
   MACROMEDIA DREAMWEAVER 8 WITH ASP, COLDFUSION, AND PHP: TRAINING FROM THE SOURCE is definitely a book that you'll want to keep on your shelf for frequent reference!



3. My compliments to the author. I have been a user of Dreamweaver for a couple of years and have been designing websites for about 3 years, but i had a very limited understanding of server-side programming and PHP. This book provided a very clear explanation of the differences between static and dynamic websites. This book also provides the benefit of the tutorials provided in each lesson. The tutorials are very thorough and structured in a relevant order. I would definitley recommend this book to any current users of DW who want to get into PHP and SQL. a beginners knowledge of web-design and programming experience would be a plus before getting into this book, but not a necessity. After working through this book , i feel that i am well educated in the subject of PHP and SQL databases, enough so that i can move on to a more advanced book and learn the more detailed aspects of PHP.
   
   Also, i only used the PHP part of the book, because of personel preference. However, the book also does a excellent job in covering the ASP and CFM technologies as well.



4. Excellent book. Very thorough, but not too much. Bardzell was very good at predicting questions in the book just as they occurred to me. That is, just as I'd start to wonder various things and consider exploring to find the answer; I'd go back to reading instead and in the following paragraph(s), there was the answer. Little to no confusion on the details of how things were supposed to be set up or organized. The book is also very aware of possible redundancy in that practically right at the same time that I repeating complete instructions for a process AGAIN was getting annoying, Bardzell chimed in to say something like: "you've done this several times now , so I'm going to assume you don't need a walk-through and conserve space for more pertinent information." I finished the entire book/example website in about 1.5 weeks (the 21-25 hours predicted work time seems very accurate) and was actually somewhat sad when I flipped the last page to find the index. Very many useful things presented in very understandable presentation--very good book.



5. The book has been great help with my current project and while I learn all about PHP and Dreamweaver.

No comments about PHP Reference: Beginner to Intermediate PHP5.

5 comments about Setting Up LAMP: Getting Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP Working Together.

1. One of the things I liked about this book was the amount of detail it had on its subjects, and yet it is not a 1000 page novel. If you just want to have a system running a web server and you don't really care about how it works and what is going on, then this is definitely not the book for you. However, if you really want to learn how these components work together and exactly what is going on, then I do recommend this book. After taking a Linux course, I picked this up and still learned quite a bit from the introduction to Linux chapter. Everything is very clearly written and easy to understand. The only thing I didn't like was that many of the pages are devoted to listing configuration files, but you can easily just skip over these if they don't apply to you.



2. This book is listed as a beginner to intermediate book, but I would rate it as intermediate at the very least. The author has a fetish for unnecessarily elaborate terminology that overcomplicates straightforward operational activities (to exemplify my point). Otherwise, it is a good overview of the four technologies and how they work together to provide a seamless web presence.



3. I am very unsatisfied with this book. It only gives instructions on how to setup a lamp using one distro only. And it was geared only to well experienced users. The book was incomprehensible to me.



4. This book was probably great a couple of years ago. It has great step-by-step instructions, and it walks you through things in a very detailed manner.
   
   However, since the versions of all software (and the OS) used in the book have been updated at least a few times since 2004, I ran into several issues. Maybe 10% of all the links are accurate (which you need to install the .rpm files in the way the book tells you to), and when you do find the updated versions of everything, some of the commands the book gives you produce errors. Since the instructions probably worked correctly in 2004, there is no information on what those errors mean or how to fix them.
   
   In short, I'm setting this book aside to find something more recent, and reloading the system I was using to test this with. If you do not have prior experience and a good understanding of how all of these programs work and how to troubleshoot their errors, I would recommend finding a more up-to-date book.



5. At the moment, don't buy this book. The reason: what is otherwise an excellent book cannot be followed, because the essential steps it takes you through require resources that are not available - ie. the web resources no longer exist. Time is money, and after spending another long day yesterday, running into one dead end after another, one failed work around after another, this book has cost me lots, and I've not achieved anywhere near Setting Up Lamp. The authors/publisher could correct this easily enough, by providing the info on their website. If these issues are corrected, the book is likely to rate differently. Until that time, invest elsewhere.

5 comments about PHP|Architect's Guide to PHP Design Patterns.

1. This book provides an quick insight of current OO patterns. Content is somewhat usefull, but related to much to testing patterns. It's good for a beginner programmer who want to start a project using OO.
   
   The quality of the paper and ink is like a home made printed book. The price is too high for that quality.



2. A great book for design patterns comprehension in PHP. There is a huge variety of patterns explained in this book, which helped me a lot. It also provides a very well written text with an easy comprehension, even for beginners in design patterns area.



3. First off I don't enjoy giving a bad mark to other people's effort. It's often too easy to put a tag value on something we had nothing to do with and even bad books are well intentioned. That been said, this book is far from being bad. The content is actually pretty good and Jason E. Sweat succeeds very well in explaining the patterns and their application in PHP. However, there's room for improvement and although I was really looking forward to give some kudos, I did have some issues with the book. I took some time to review it to help make it better in subsequent editions.
   
   My opinions are made upon a few assumptions. Some may agree others may not, which is the point of a personal review, if you share my point of view chances are that you'll experience the same thing.
   
   1) I presume that anyone deciding to learn about design patterns is probably serious about Object Oriented Programming and anyone serious about OOP in PHP should probably switch from PHP4 to PHP5. This book has been out for about a year and a half. PHP5 was already on course to acquire wide acceptance, yet Jason chose to code mainly in PHP4, which is clearly crippled in its OO implementation compared to PHP5.
   
   This is not so much of an issue in chapters where pattern implementation is very similar in both versions, but at times the lack of true OO features in PHP4 made it tedious to go through the examples and I felt like just skipping the PHP4 parts and go straight to the PHP5 ones. It wasn's easy because only some of these examples have a PHP5 equivalent.
   
   We are therefore often confined to make sense of all the turn around techniques deployed to mimic the simplest features natural to true OOP, like the underscore naming convention to emulate private variables, using global variables to emulate staticity, prepending the ampersand (&) to pass objects by reference and other little 'tricks' that succeed more at veering attention away from the pattern at hand to language features.
   
   
   2) I presume that most people who got this book did because of the two keywords in the title 'Design Patterns'. Yet there is as much, if not more, about Test Driven Development (TDD) using Simpletest as there is about design patterns. Don't get me wrong, TDD is an excellent coding practice, but as much as it can be practiced along with design patterns both can be clearly isolated. If, like me, you learn by focusing on one specific topic at a time, you will find this book's approach very annoying at times.
   
   First, it's an informal introduction to TDD. You will probably need more support from a more specific text on TDD before really becoming proficient at it, so I don't see the point in trying to actually teach it along with design patterns. An introductory chapter would have been enough (the Mockobject Pattern chapter was perfect for this) and maybe an appendix with links to tests for the examples for those interested.
   
   Second, Jason's insistence to test every bit of piece of code makes the reading even more tedious. Examples are cluttered with tests and the logic doesn't flow as smoothly anymore. Plus, TDD is an iterative coding process, meaning that you write a little test and then you implement just enough logic for the test to pass, then you add some more test and then you... repeat until done. If in real life the overall result can be good, it is not very practical to try and reproduce it in a book. Your tests may never be exhaustive or meaningful enough to actually matter and you may be constrained to use examples a tad bit too simplistic to illustrate your point, which is exactly what happens in this book.
   
   I felt that the introduction of TDD in the book was meant exactly as a separate attempt at explaining that technique, not as a support to understand design patterns and the two topics became somehow intertwined and less substantial. Trying to chase a rooster and a rabbit, we're left with a chick and a bunny.
   
   Here are my recommendations for the next edition:
   - Forget php4
   - Keep TDD for another book or introduce it in the mockobject pattern chapter or an appendix
   - Concentrate on design patterns
   - Include more solid examples
   - Work more on refactoring solutions to really show how they remap to patterns



4. This book is great, like any other O'Reilly books. It's helpful to those who already have knowledge of PHP.



5. I'm relatively new to objects and design patterns and have been learning them for only the last 4 months. As most people know PHP 5 was the first iteration of a half way decent obeject implementation in PHP. Therefore there is just now beginning to be OO related design books on the market for this functionality. I've bought them all as my opinion is this on trumps the rest. It's not going to tell you much on object theory or PHP's object syntax. However when it comes to design architecture it's be best I've found for PHP specifically. Outside of that if you're looking for good Design Pattern and Architecture theory stuff you should start reading Java based books as there's some really good ones.

5 comments about Beginning PHP5 (Programmer to Programmer).

1. When I first thought of the idea of reading a book that I would be able to choose I knew I wanted to learn something useful. I have wanted to get at least one language under my belt by the time I am 16. There are many languages out there such as Perl, PHP, Cold Fusion, ASP, Python, C++, C, and of course Assembly. Now I do not think anyone could learn Assembly right off the bat without learning easier languages first. I have a great interest in dynamic web sites and servers. Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, and free time of course are a prefect match! I have always had to learn everything I know about computers from researching by myself, whether it is Google or in this case a book.
   PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) is a language that revolves around web sites. With PHP developers are able to create a more dynamic web site then they normally would with regular HTML. An example would be a simple site with a user / login option / feature. What PHP does is although developers to code a script to handle such an option / feature.
   This book does a very theroe job of explaining the whole processor and background of PHP. It starts out explaining the apache side of things, showing how to set up a server on both platforms. Next it explains the syntax of PHP and has many examples. Then throughout the book it explains some functions and how they can be used. I epically liked the chapter on Dir / File manipulation. After it explains functions and examples it shows you how to use MySQL along with PHP. With is a must if you are going to be learning PHP. Also I like that it cover image manipulation.
   
   This is what I created using the knowledge I gained from this book. It is a site where users may create an account and then upload certain types of media (images, audio, and video). And has a nice GUI where they can manage it from.



2. The numerous grammar and coding errors in this book make it one to completely avoid if you are new to PHP programming. Fortunately, I was familiar enough with PHP to catch most of the coding errors.
   
   The thing that probably bothered me the most was the fact that many of the explanations of the code given in the book refer to code that isn't even printed in the book! The explanations seemed to refer to a previous revision, rather than the code in the final printed version. Whoever was the project manager and/or proofreader of this book should be shamed and then fired.



3. I gave up on this book due to the abundance of coding errors. Each time there was a mistake in their code, it took me quite a lot of time to figure out what the error was and fix it - time I don't have, when trying to learn something new.
   
   Wrox needs to be tougher with its authors and technical reviewers. Instead of accepting that errors are just part of the publishing experience, they should be trying to inculcate a culture of meticulousness and excellence. Until then, people like me will drop their books flat.



4. I'm a recent Comp Sci grad from University of Maryland, so I'm pretty well versed in lots of programming languages. I needed to learn PHP for an employer and I saw this book in borders. Out of all the books there, I liked this one the best because of the learning flow, and it had exercises for you to do on your own - something most php books don't have.
   
   However, the good news ends right about there. I am just starting the 3rd chapter and I am CONVINCED THAT THERE IS NO WAY this book could have gone thru an editor. It seriously seems like it was just written and printed! This book gets 2 stars because:
   
   1) Every code example I've done so far (about 4 in the 2nd chapter, WOULD NOT RUN, even though I copied and pasted straight from the book. I actually had to debug the book!!! The bugs were simple things too, like missing semicolons or concat (.) symbols. If I weren't already used to debugging, then I would've pulled my hair out trying to find out what's wrong.
   
   2) The solutions to the questions at the end of the 2nd chapter use programming concepts that they didn't introduce yet! A forloop is used in the solution, but loops aren't covered until chapter 4! When I went back to check my answer I thought to myself, 'Are you kidding me?!'
   
   Now, I usually don't write reviews on amazon, but I had to write one for this book. There must be MUCH BETTER books for php than this one. If you're paying this much money for something, you shouldn't have to settle for these kinds of problems. Do yourself a favor and buy ANY other book and make up your own test questions to solve. Thank God my employer paid for this and I didnt blow money on a book that wasn't edited at all.



5. I'm new to PHP (with some experience in HTML and C++) and I found this a good ground-floor introduction to the basics of the language. It also walks you through setting up your own web server (which I had found intimidating, but this book made it fairly easy).
   
   That said, there are a LOT of typos, both in the text and the code. For that reason, I would not recommend buying this book at full price (I got it for free at the library).
   
   Readers should take everything with a grain of salt and also should consult the publisher's "erratum" page before reading: http://www.wrox.com/WileyCDA/WroxTitle/productCd-0764557831,descCd-view_errata.html
   
   And a memo to the authors: next time, use spell check!

1 comments about PHP and MySQL: Create - Modify - Reuse.

1. Someone new to both PHP and MySQL might ask, why this combination? Why should I learn both in tandem? Because, as the authors explain, in many practical situations this duo is used by programmers; especially for web applications. This is really an implicit subtitle for the book. What you learn here is that PHP and MySQL live for the web.
   
   The chapters are characterised by application examples all devoted to the web. As in writing web pages for a community forum. The pages are coded in PHP, and the data created by users is then stored in a MySQL backend database. This overall method is followed in other examples. The PHP code samples seem easy to understand. The language has been found, or more accurately, it has been revved into its current version, such that much code is indeed easy to write and understand, and not just the text's examples.
   
   To be sure, the book is not about the theory of relational databases. Only the simplest of tables is used within MySQL. Yes, there is discussion about the tables used in each example. But it is really limited, to anyone who knows the subject. For a comprehensive usage of MySQL, you do need to look elsewhere.
   
   One chapter, on shopping cart code, complements a recent book on e-commerce, Wiley Pathways E-Business (Wiley Pathways). It spoke to non-programmers about the travails of starting an e-commerce website. A requirement was for a shopping cart. One way is to hire a programmer. Expensive. But if you are that programmer, consider looking at the extended example offered in the current text. It is extensive enough that it could be used as a code base for your task.

5 comments about PHP Phrasebook (Developer's Library).

1. This book is one of those that you like to keep at arms length. It has a lot of useful code that comes in handy. I liked it so much I purchased the MySQL Phrasebook as well.



2. My first book on PHP was Sams Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL and Apache All in One (3rd Edition) (Sams Teach Yourself) which was great to get me started. But once I started designing and writing in PHP it was not very helpful. I have had this phrase bookon only 2 days and already I have used four examples (uploading a CSV file, saving form data, and two string manipulation funcitons). The index and organization are laid out like I think ..."how do I load a CSV file?" ... look up CSV and there's real examples plus cautions on how to look out and deal with problems. When I am writing now, this book will be next to me!



3. I am fairly new to the world of PHP. Most of what I have learned about these scripts has been self-taught through trial and error or gleamed through articles or scripts found on the internet. Even with my limited knowledge, I have always seen great practical usage of PHP scripts and am always trying to learn a little more on the subject. Therefore, I was really excited when I got the opportunity to review this book.
   
   I have to admit that, at first, I was a little bit lost in reading this book. PHP Phrasebook: Essential Code and Commands is definitely not a book for beginners. However, once I started actually writing the script out and using the examples scripts as a sort of tutorial system, I quickly figured out what each set of scripts actually did. Then, I started to get ideas on how to make practical use of this new information. Moreover, as I continued through the sections, I found a good deal of solutions to problems such as manipulating strings to check usenames and passwords; protecting email addresses; pre-filling forms; and creating a secured area that I didn't have the knowledge to solve before reading this book.



4. It's kind of like having a Reader's Digest version of an O'Reilly Cookbook title, but more oriented to learning the language instead of just listing the solutions to odd problems.
   
   The Phrasebook series gives me everything I need to know to use my existing knowledge in a new language. Sure, they are not comprehensive. But too much information slows down the initial learning process, and makes the book less likely to be read. Read one of these books and you'll know enough to get started, and make smarter Google searches when you get stuck. Best of all, it fits in your back pocket.
   
   If you're already a programmer and simply want to start using a new language, buy a Phrasebook. The PHP Phrasebook was my first one, and I "learned" PHP while I was in the waiting room of the mechanic shop having my car inspected.



5. I gave this book a trial run for a day of programming, in an effort to find a handy little reference book I could refer to when I forgot syntax or needed a function but couldn't find the name.
   I found the index suitable, but the descriptions of functions made lots of assumptions about what you should do, rather than present a clear explanation. Then, a large chunk of code is presented as an 'answer', with the inclusion of a lot of confusing parts. This is not a good phrasebook, but more of a skimpy tutorial book with a slant.