Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:  
Summary: Excellent "Let's Do It" Tutorial
Comment: I reach for this book when I want to get up to speed on something about PHP 5 quickly. With it, I can start coding and seeing results right away. The book covers a range of topics, the practicality of which can be best appreciated when you are faced with a real life project. For example, pp. 660-665 in Chapter 27, "Practical Database Queries", covers creating paged output (that is, spreading query results across several web pages) and listing page numbers which was just the thing I wanted to learn last night. My wife's database needs that sort of output. You can download Gilmore's example code and quickly start using it and then applying the lessons learned to build your own code.
This book is geared to people who want to get their hands on real code, wring the juice from it, make mistakes with it, learn all they can from it, and then tap out fresh code that does the same things with a little more oomph. Such people do not like long, dreary tracts of reading before being able participate in the elusive action. It is a good learning format because the only useful way to learn programming is to dive right in and do it. The book is a blend of brief discussion and quick code snippets with the expected results shown right away. This is a very good way to learn programming.
The section on SOAP, starting on page 450, makes me realize I had better experiment with this interesting technology. I'd certainly like to be able to find the temperature for a given postal code -- and other things of greater interest. Chapters 12, "PHP Authentication", 14, "Networking With PHP", and 15, "PHP and LDAP", look into core internet services that every programmer should know how to exploit, but too often don't. For example I've learned how to authenticate a user with LDAP.
The author, W. Jason Gilmore, is cheerful and most helpful in his responses to reader inquiries. He responded quickly to my questions and I am impressed with his ability to courteously point me in the right direction.
Be sure to download Gilmore's example code. There are 30 chapters worth of programming stuffed into that zip file.
The book has a few rough edges. The most obvious is that some sentences are a little wordy. That's all right, you can move on to the next paragraphs, and will soon be trying out a new example. I wish Jason had discussed MySQL 4.1 and the mysqli interface, especially since there are other books around that cover MySQL 4.0.x. Perhaps if he had added another chapter to cover that? We can always look forward to a second edition.
This book should be near every serious programmer's desk. You, dear reader, will reach for it a surprising amount of the time.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Well written and concepts clearly explained.
Comment: Liked the book very much.
What I liked best about it was the simple and well-thought-out
explainations of some of the underlying technology that go
hand-in-hand with PHP such as web services and web templates.
Like all good authors Mr. Glimore goes a long way to demystify
the potential complexities of the technology and show us just
how easy it is to do something really useful in PHP.
Customer Rating:
Summary: From Novice to Duh!
Comment: I'm a seasoned ASP developer looking to move away from M$ to something a little more solid...PHP! So...I definitely needed a book that would serve as a good introduction to both PHP and MySQL. Unfortunately this book does not serve that purpose. If you're looking for a 'beginners' book on PHP and have no prior PHP experience...look elsewhere!
Granted, to an existing PHP user this book will likely serve its purpose as a decent reference book. It definitely covers alot of ground. But it's the terminology that messed me up. Word of advice to the author...don't assume that your readers already know something but don't treat them like idiots either. For example, in the chapter for installing and configuring PHP, I found that the explanations for many of the PHP settings to be confusing at best. For this section, I would have given a good solid introduction to the basics of installing PHP then given more detailed configuration later once the reader has gotten their feet wet. Too much info early on with terms that I don't understand. So...I jumped ahead to Chapter 3...the basics! Again, the terminology stumped me. When I got to the Output section and saw: boolean print(argument) What the hell is 'boolean' have to do with this? No explanation. Then theres this: void echo(string) Umm...ok...void...that's the opposite of boolean right? It wasn't until I saw the Tip box later on till I got even a brief explanation as to the context of these terms. The final draw for me was the explanations for printf() commands...or the lack of it. I found the authors explanations to be lacking.
So..to sum up, if you're an existing PHP developer then this may be the book for you. If you're a beginner...find another book! Nuff said.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Execellent Book for Beginners
Comment: I knew nuts about PHP and MySQL. At the bookshop, I was contemplating between this book and another one from the Bible series. Skimming through both books, I felt confortable with this book rather than the other one, and I never regreted my decision to buy it. The author gives all his instructions clearly and concisely, making me grasp the language at ease. Everything started from the basics and builds up right up to the insights of the programming language. This gives the reader a good understanding of the what and whys going through a reader's mind. I would say that this is the best programming book that I've owned! FIVE STARS for the book!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Not for PHP beginners!
Comment: Maybe beginners with PHP 5.0, but you definately need some prior PHP scripting experience for this book to be useful.
Gilmore does not have any real life examples for you to try and build your knowledge on in this book. Only a couple of lines are for each different sub-topic. None of them are connected to previous lessons. Some of the "examples" is not complete code. Just how that particular function or command would look on a single line. Very poor for a beginners guide.
I would have liked to see the book walk me through building some applications then tie them all together at the end before moving on to MySQL.
I recommed PHP & MySQL Programming (3rd Edition) PRIOR to reading this book.
After you can write your own simple PHP applications should you then move on to this book.
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