PHP and MySQL Web Development, 4th Ed. (book)
Posted: Thu Aug 26, 2010 2:40 am
This book is considered the modern-day PHP book. Almost every language has one, from "C++ Primer Plus", "Pro C# and the .NET Platform", to "Learning Perl", these books come as highly rated by their readers as possible. Every tech author wants to be part of this group of books, each with hundreds of 5-star ratings on Amazon. And PHP and MySQL Web Development lives up to the others! While it doesn't start from the absolute beginning, such as HTML basics, nor does it spend 3 chapters on variables, it is a very good start for anyone who has at least had a shred of programming or scripting experience, considering that the first chapter is a crash course on PHP basics.
Part I of the book is the PHP crash course, and shows you the "PHP way" to do most of the basics in the language. Part II covers MySQL, both how to use it alone, and more importantly, how to access MySQL in your PHP code. One of the nice things about this part is the PHP MySQL coding section, and the "SQL recipe" style it uses, where it runs through how to piece together some of the most common tasks you will need with MySQL, such as inner joins, left joins, sub-queries and more, all while staying focused on how these would apply to a typical e-commerce reporting application. Part III of the book covers e-commerce and security. This is the only part of the book I found a bit lacking, as I actually found myself pointing out security holes in some of the code they were presenting, although most of it is prefaced by saying it is not full, production-ready code. If you plan on coding an e-commerce suite from scratch in PHP (and why would you?), you will need much more than just this book to create a stable, secure system that can be counted on. Part IV of the book covers advanced PHP topics, but still very important stuff you will be using constantly, such as date manipulation and session control. I learned a lot about how PHP works in this section, and found it to be one of the most interesting parts of the book. However, Part V of the book is arguably one of the most useful sections, as it covers 6 or 7 real-world (yet still fairly small, of course) applications. You will need to make sure you get the CD with this book to use this section, though, since for space purposes, not every line of every script in every project can be printed. Some of the most important sections of these scripts are reviewed with explanations not only on how the code works, but also why they chose to do these a certain way. The bulk of these applications is left to the reader to peruse on their own, though.
This is an amazing book. I have checked out numerous PHP books, and no other book is as clear, concise or as merciful as this one is. It covers all of the big topics every PHP programmer needs to know, without hitting some of the more obscure topics used more often in desktop programming, such as PHP socket programming (which is really not that useful in this language). There are still many other topics, such as the aforementioned PHP sockets, to lead you to pick up another more advanced book if the need arises, but this book will cover almost everything you need for PHP game development and beyond.
Part I of the book is the PHP crash course, and shows you the "PHP way" to do most of the basics in the language. Part II covers MySQL, both how to use it alone, and more importantly, how to access MySQL in your PHP code. One of the nice things about this part is the PHP MySQL coding section, and the "SQL recipe" style it uses, where it runs through how to piece together some of the most common tasks you will need with MySQL, such as inner joins, left joins, sub-queries and more, all while staying focused on how these would apply to a typical e-commerce reporting application. Part III of the book covers e-commerce and security. This is the only part of the book I found a bit lacking, as I actually found myself pointing out security holes in some of the code they were presenting, although most of it is prefaced by saying it is not full, production-ready code. If you plan on coding an e-commerce suite from scratch in PHP (and why would you?), you will need much more than just this book to create a stable, secure system that can be counted on. Part IV of the book covers advanced PHP topics, but still very important stuff you will be using constantly, such as date manipulation and session control. I learned a lot about how PHP works in this section, and found it to be one of the most interesting parts of the book. However, Part V of the book is arguably one of the most useful sections, as it covers 6 or 7 real-world (yet still fairly small, of course) applications. You will need to make sure you get the CD with this book to use this section, though, since for space purposes, not every line of every script in every project can be printed. Some of the most important sections of these scripts are reviewed with explanations not only on how the code works, but also why they chose to do these a certain way. The bulk of these applications is left to the reader to peruse on their own, though.
This is an amazing book. I have checked out numerous PHP books, and no other book is as clear, concise or as merciful as this one is. It covers all of the big topics every PHP programmer needs to know, without hitting some of the more obscure topics used more often in desktop programming, such as PHP socket programming (which is really not that useful in this language). There are still many other topics, such as the aforementioned PHP sockets, to lead you to pick up another more advanced book if the need arises, but this book will cover almost everything you need for PHP game development and beyond.
