Product Description

PHP is far more than a cult language or open-source icon. It's a remarkably capable language that's well integrated with lots of technologies--notably mSQL and MySQL database servers--and quite easy to learn. Programming PHP helps you up the PHP learning curve, very nearly guaranteeing that you'll find in its pages an example that illustrates every fundamental aspect of the language and its most important extension modules. Plus, there's some cool advanced stuff, like recipes for manipulating images, working with Extensible Markup Language (XML) content, and generating Adobe Acrobat (PDF) files. Rasmus Lerdorf invented PHP and quarterbacks its ongoing evolution, so there's little question of the content's authority.

The authors use a Talmudic style to explore PHP's capabilities and explain them to their readers, meaning that they like to present code and commentary in close formation, with each enhancing the other. Typically, they'll present a capability generically and show the relevant code. Then they'll dig into variations on the theme, calling attention to required code alterations as they go. This is a book about PHP itself, so practically no attention is paid to PHP Builder or other development tools. Regardless, this book will help you solve programming challenges with PHP, and enable you to write efficient, attractive code. --David Wall

Topics covered: The PHP programming language, for people who are coming to PHP with a bit of programming experience in other languages or who want to expand their existing PHP knowledge beyond the basics. Sections deal with the core language, as well as HTTP session management, database connectivity (to MySQL and Oracle, as well as with PHP Extension and Application Repository--PEAR), graphics file manipulation, XML parsing, and PDF creation. There are instructions for building a PHP extension library in C, as well as a function reference and guide to existing extensions.

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Product Details

Publisher	O'Reilly Media
ISBN	0596006810
Format	Paperback
Author	Rasmus Lerdorf,Kevin Tatroe,Peter MacIntyre
EAN	9780596006815
Label	O'Reilly Media
Edition	2
Dewey Decimal Number	005.2
Studio	O'Reilly Media
Number Of Pages	544
Title	Programming PHP
Publication Date	2006-04-28
Manufacturer	O'Reilly Media

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Customer Reviews

Good Book

Review by Andrei Mouravski, 2010-07-21

This book does exactly what I believe it is intended to do; Teach a new PHP programmer the basic syntax of the language and give insight into PHP's more language specific features. Having used PHP before there were a two main things I was looking for in this book.

The first of these was Readability. There are two very different ways to read this book. The first is to just go through it as if it were a novel. For someone who is completely new to the language, this would be the ideal method as it steps through the different parts of the language, gradually increasing in difficulty and complexity as you go. However, my main problem with this is found in the later chapters, where the topics turn from the language itself to very specific tasks and libraries. Of course it's nice to know that PHP has the capability to write PDF files, but I don't think that should be a part of this book. It isn't standard by any means and for someone like myself, if I wasn't already experienced in PHP I would still feel like it could be space better used in this otherwise great book.

The other way to go through the book is to simply search what you are looking for. I read this book mainly to refresh myself on some of the concepts and syntax of the language, and was able to do just that in a timely fashion. If there is something you're specifically looking for, it can be found relatively quickly. Sometimes the progression of topics within a chapter can seem a little out of order, but the chapters are short and concise enough to where this isn't really a problem.

The second important factor was the actual content of the book. As far as reading the descriptions of what the code does and how it all works, I thought it was well written and would be sufficient who has had experience in another language. Based on a few of the other reviews I looked at of this book, I will have to agree that some of the code does not perhaps use the best standards. However, that's not the purpose of this book. Sometimes the most complex and efficient solution is not the best for teaching and explaining. I'd much rather see some basic code structure repeated five times in a block than have to decipher some complex for loop to achieve a menial task.

Aside from the style of the code though, my only real concern is with the code relating to the specific extensions, which I really don't feel belong. Other than this though, each section of code is clearly explained by the text preceding and is written in a manner clear enough for a novice in the field and language to understand.

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Too Much PHP4 to be useful these days

Review by Ian Young, 2010-07-09

The "Object Oriented" portion of the book is a terrible reference for PHP5 programming, as it uses examples based on PHP4, which won't work in PHP5. "Learning PHP5" might be a better book for people seeking an up-to-date reference for occasional PHP programmers or learners.

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Well Written Book

Review by SM, 2010-03-20

I really liked the way this book was written. This book is written with so many examples that it really got my fundamentals clear. I would recommend this book to a person who is looking for a book to start learning PHP.

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Good for reference

Review by S. Noedel, 2009-07-13

As someone with a fair amount of programming experience already, I did not find this book too hard to read. It does, however, require some knowledge about programming in general. Those of you with experience in C languages will find that it doesn't waste any time explaining what a function is, but people who are new to programming might want to start with something a bit simpler. The most useful part of the book for me is the list of all the built-in functions.

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Good one

Review by Newbee1, 2009-04-19

This book is more like a PHP dictionary. It's really not good for a new PHP programmer. But once you get familiar with this language and start your own project, you will find it's useful for you to find syntax and usage.

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