Customer Rating:  
Summary: A great second book on PHP and MySQL web development
Comment: Almost everything I was hoping for based on the reviews here. The coverage of PHP and MySQL is very good. I rate the book 4 (not 5) starts because it seemed to jump from basic language and environment tutorials (best part of book) straight into advanced web applications that were beyond what I felt ready for based on the earlier material. I read Larry Ullman's PHP for the WWW, then returned to this text with much greater success.Both this book and Ullman's suffer from the fact that their code is outdated based on fairly recent changes to standard PHP coding conventions (register globals = off as default PHP install).
Customer Rating:
Summary: At times hard to follow, but a fine back-up reference
Comment: Not the best for the beginner. Personally I hate it when incredibly advanced programmers write books. They use abbreviations for variables that I found hard to follow, tons of 'include' files, which if you aren't familar with programming is excellent real world practice, but, not the best way to do things when you're trying to learn and understand the language, or an example. This book has been used as an alternative reference when an example in my other books isn't exactly clear, as another perspective. Cutting corners with abreviations and include files is fine when you're doing a project for a client and time is of the essence, but not when you're trying to explain concepts to the learning masses!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Very helpful...
Comment: A great resource for php and mysql development.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent resource for beginners and experts alike
Comment: I first picked up this book at the behest of my supervisors to expand the division's web design to new borders. Having never programmed beforehand, I was daunted to say the least. However, the book takes an easy, step-by-step approach to introduce even the clueless programmer to the language of PHP. On top of that, I often find myself referring back to it in my web design efforts. I'm still learning new things about PHP, but this book gave me a solid foundation from which to start and continues to help me to this day.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The definitive guide to PHP/MySQL web development
Comment: I bought this book based on the recommendations of the previous reviews you see here. Admittedly I found the setup section somewhat confusing for those wanting to setup their php and mysql on Windows XP, eventually I sought advice from various forums and now run php as an ISAPI module in IIS, which works beautifully. To be fair the packages used in the setup are on the books CD's, but are now somewhat dated.However the book is still one of the best I have read and covers a large scope of work for the beginner to the advanced php + mysql backend applications, with extremely well structured examples and references that will get you up to speed with the more challenging mainstream applications later in the book. The sections on MySQL is very comprehensive but well researched and presented. Other topics include OpenSSL, GD support for Image manipulation and PDF file generation.
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