Customer Rating: 
Summary: Must have for beginners in PHP and My SQL
Comment: This is a GREAT book on PHP and MySQL. When I first bought this book, I didn't know the first thing about server side scripting or databases. Now I'm CEO of my own web based store. Everything I know came from this book. It's very easy to read, and it doesn't assume the reader already has prior programming knowledge. The thing that I like most about this book is the examples and accompanying source code CD. They are exactly the type of examples that you would need to start your own store online or just to understand the basic functionality the whole database application concept. Most of the code you can just cut and paste (with minor changes). Long story short, after going through this book and examples you will be WELL ON YOUR WAY to doing some great things with PHP and MySQL. IT IS A MUST HAVE!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Wonderful for Beginners - GREAT examples
Comment: This is a extremely good book to learn PHP and MySQL from scratch, as I did. It provides absolutely wonderful real-world examples, and half the book is full of complete projects ranging from creating your own forums, to making your own web-based email service. Very well done.The only gripe I have with it is that I wish it went deeper into session control using PHP.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Sorry to throw cold water on this book, but...
Comment: this is not even close to a 5 star book. Part of it is not really the book's fault, however. Because PHP is continually changing, a lot of the functions get upgraded. On more than one occassion, I followed what the book suggested to a tee, only to find out that it did not work (I currently use PHP 4.2.2). The functions suggested for session management and file uploading (to name a few) simply don't work with this version of PHP. Also, this is a typical beginner's book and does not tell you how to solve problems that you'll run into in real life. For example, 1. There's no mention of file downloading at all. Ok, I've done file downloads in other languages, so I was able to figure it out. However, if you're doing real projects, you'll be asked to do this eventually. This book does not explain this at all. 2. Session management and cookies are treatly lightly. Setting cookies can get pretty detailed especially when you're working with multiple domains. 3. Regular expression coverage is .... If you're used to all of the functionality that Perl has to offer regarding regular expressions, you'll feel handcuffed using this book to do regexes. Backreferences? Positive and Negative Assertions? Nice concepts, but you won't find them covered in this book. 4. Weak coverage of MySQL date functions. Look, I could go on and on. No coverage of PHP and XML whatsoever! Forget about using the book as a reference to SQL. MySQL (until I think 4.2) does not support sub-selects. You can get around this using things like left and right joins. How is it covered? "Left Join: Tries to match rows across tables and fills in nonmatching rows with NULLs. Use in SQL with the LEFT JOIN keywords. Used for finding missing values. You can equivalently use RIGHT JOIN." That's right! Almost 900 pages and I just quoted the entire coverage of the subject! No examples. No examples. No explainations of the above. That's it! Unfortunately, I continually find myself (and I mean continually) going to php.net, mysql.com and devshed.com to get answers to questions that should be answered in a book that I paid money for. If you are new to app servers or programming in general, this book will give you the basics and let you get your feet wet. If you want to create a simple web form and submit that data into a database, for the most part this book fits the bill. It explains installation of both PHP and MySQL pretty well. My overall comment, however is that this book will give you nothing that's not easily obtainable from the three sites I mentioned above. And more importantly, it does not give you the type of info that will help you get real projects done. When I'm looking at someone's code and s/he uses syntax I'm not familiar with, I need to be able to figure it out using the book. Time and time again, this book failed in that regard. If I didn't know it, this book certainly was not going to help me.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent all around
Comment: This was the first book of 7 or so that I purchased and I think it's by far the best. The authors clearly explain various aspects of both PHP and MySQL. The book is one of those rare ones that does a great job for the beginners and winds up being a great reference for somewhat and mostly seasoned developers. I keep rereading various parts over and over and it's very helpful. If I was going to recommend just one book on the subject - this would definitely be it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Fantastic guide to building data-driven websites!
Comment: I bought this book when I was just getting started on a website for my neighborhood, and although I am an experienced developer with knowledge of ASP, JSP and SQL, I had not personally worked with PHP or MySQL before.In less than a month's time, using only this book and the PHP language reference (included with PHP) I was able to build a website with user logon, discussion forums, user-customizable profiles with the option to upload pictures of themselves, and online web email. I wrote all of this from scratch, using the examples from this book, and this book alone. For those of you who are learning to develop "live" (ie. non-static HTML) websites, and you've chosen to use only open-standards technology to do so, I can't imagine a better book to assist you than this one. It does a fantastic job of explaining things in simple terms, and provides a very good overview of PHP and MySQL, covering the subject matter clearly and concisely, without a lot of additional, unnecessary verbage. I was originally going to develop my website using JSPs, but learned that my ISP did not support JSPs, only Java servlets (!), so I was forced to look at PHP as a faster, easier way of developing the site. It has been an exciting learning experience, thanks mostly to this book. The book is worth the price, and then some.
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