Customer Rating: 
Summary: A great all around introduction to PHP
Comment: I purchased this book to supplement my growing library of computer reference books, and on the whole was not dissapointed. I used the book mostly as reference and ended up flipping to the index to reference specific information. I found all the explanations to be clear and code snippets were fruitful while not being overwhelming. Welling and Thomson do a great job covering the diverse aspects of PHP use and offer many common in-depth examples such as a sophisticated shopping cart and web forum. Even though more advanced PHP functionality cannot be found here (try Professional PHP4 for that), if you're willing to get your hands a little dirty, this is a great place to start.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: good book
Comment: good book, I liked it as I like most Sams books. Lots of examples makes it easier to learn.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Deeply Dissapointed
Comment: I read page after page of glowing reviews for this book and of course decided this was the best book on the subject and ordered one right there. I got my new book, eagerly read the first hundred pages and thought, "yep, this is the one." I knew nothing of PHP or databases or even programming, but I like to think I'm a quick study. How wrong I was... at least so far. The problem with this book is that there are a lot of things included that just don't matter, and the most basic important things that do matter (like retrieving data from the database --the whole point of the book I might add, and inserting binary files into a MySQL database) are either MIA or get a vague and very limited two-page treatment and end right when it starts talking about what you NEED to know. The index for this book is completely unmanagable (try finding PHP's "Select" function, I dare you -- it's listed under "rows" --does that make any sense at all?) and it is a bit outdated as well. If you use phpMyAdmin to set up your databases, this book won't help. Every example assumes you use the older "MySQL monitor." Another thing that bothered me was the way the authors say every little piece of code is "easy". We have very different definitions of "easy." Their definition makes me feel like a moron. Also you should know a little programming before reading this book. There are a lot of phrases like "This should be familiar to C programmers" and "[whatever] functions in php much like it does in Perl." In the end, my dissapointment is my own fault because the book says right on it: "Intermediate -- advanced" If you don't know anything about programming, go with another book or at least read up on C or Perl before you tackle this one.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Misleading examples and not enough explanation
Comment: I found this book to only touch upon important subjects of MySQL and PHP. If you want a better explanation of PHP and MySQL download the free online manual for each of these. The examples they give you are not detailed and can be misleading and have you scratching your head why they don't work.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excelente book
Comment: Excellent book, explains all the necessary to develop a good site. It contains very good examples to understand everything about PHP and MySQL. Definitively, my best purchase in PHP and MySQL.
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