Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: I'm a PHP beginner
Comment: I picked up about three different books on the subject, and this one was by far the best. It moved at a fairly rapid pace, but each example was explained fairly thoroughly. The past couple of years I haven't had much luck with computer books; some were either a little too slow (PHP Visual Blueprint-- but at least the examples worked) and/or extremely sloppy (Designing with Javascript from O'Reilly is a prime example-- demo files from the website either didn't work or were missing entirely-- and the errata page didn't even begin to address these problems) or presented haphazardly (Elizabeth Castro's Peachpit book on Perl). I was really glad to find this book when I did. I was about to give up on computers entirely and turn to some disreputable vocation like war profiteering.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Fairly well written, but needs work
Comment: I'm a semi-newbie when it comes to PHP. I've done some simple PHP previously, and for a project at work I needed to ramp up my knowledge of using PHP together with MySQL. Due to the ratings for this book, I ordered it.
It's fairly well written, but the code snippets themselves occasionally have syntax errors. This extends to the source code that you can download from their site. I can understand syntax or other errors in a book, but I can't forgive errors in a file that is easy to update online. In fact, it got so bad that I had to look online through some tutorials to get the syntax correct for my project, defeating the purpose of me purchasing this book.
While providing a solid understanding (If somewhat terse at times) of the workings and background of both software packages, error checking needs to come into play.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Very good resource
Comment: I bought this book because I had a project that required me to set up a dynamic website driven by MySQL and PHP. Using what I learned in the book and a few free online tutorials I was able to finish the project 1 month early.
This book assumes some prior programming experience, so if you've never programmed getting an intro to programming book would be a good idea first. There are many examples of code in the book which cover many things you might like to do with a website driven by these two technologies. Not a terribly difficult read with lots of info.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Frustrating
Comment: I'm not new to programming or web programming, but I was new to PHP. This book is much better as a reference than an intro to PHP, however, even there it has its limitations.
I bought this book, read the first 5 chapters (130 pages), and then stopped reading it because I was learning too slowly (ie, reading too many pages and picking up too little usability). As an introductory text, I would rather this book moved at a greater breadth but less depth -- it goes through dozens of specific functions, making it feel like a dictionary. There is also little attention brought to the functions you will be using soon over the ones you will not use for awhile yet. In that sense, it was very frustrating to spend a lot of time reading several chapters and still not feeling like I was getting anywhere or able to use much of the power of PHP.
In my frustration, I decided to revisit w3schools . com, and I found their tutorial immensely useful as an introduction to both PHP and MySQL (I needed both and I needed them quickly). That choice allowed me to start writing some PHP code within an hour and start working with databases quickly as well (nothing is mentioned about MySQL until Chapter 24 of this book).
So now, instead of use this PHP/MySQL book as a learning tool, I use it as a reference. The index isn't ideal*, so it still isn't a great reference, and the MySQL layout has not been helpful. I will be buying some PHP cookbooks to get a better feel for the capabilities of PHP and how to use its functions properly, and I will report back in this review after I find a better reference to recommend over this one (hopefully by mid-January).
*The index is HUGE, but I still have a difficult time finding things I need since I look for a lay-word over the word that is listed. If I already knew the word that is listed in the index, I may not even need to look in the index.
This book was written for new programmers that want a programming introduction to PHP and was not written for web programmers new to PHP. Although I program, I want features of a web programming book when I buy a web programming book.
What I consider a feature of a (good) web programming book: Chapters are split into a quick intro to the most commonly used fuctions of the chapter's topic (5-10 pages) and a longer part for use as a reference (15-20 pages). The book's format has good eye catching sections so readers do not waste time finding what is important if we just want to skim things so we can get into doing some web programming quickly. Commonly used functions are not buried in a bunch of uncommonly used functions.
Customer Rating:
Summary: excellent coverage of essential 'need to know'
Comment: Although the title says 'From Novice to Professional' be aware that you won't go from novice to *expert* with this book. It will, however, bring you to a decent functional level (hence professional). Also, it is true that the book assumes a basic understanding of programming. So if you're new to programming, get an 'Intro to Programming' book before or follow some general programming tutorials to bring you up to the basics.
This is a great introductory book to PHP that can as well serve as a reference. It covers many areas, not always in depth, but most times enough to give you some solid bases and get you to actually 'do stuff'. The good thing about this is that at least 95% percent of the stuff covered matter. What that means for you is that you are veered to the right choice of technologies and concepts from the beginning, ready to expand your knowledge in any of the areas.
The book assumes that you want to work with Apache (which you should ;) ) and explains how to set things up in both unix and windows environment. However, even with a book these installations seldom go without problems, so I would strongly recommend to search for a bundle installation like wampserver, xampp or any other that group the 3 applications (apache, mysql, php).
If you're strong headed like me and like to hurt yourself you can decide to go through the pain and install each individually. The tradeoff is that you have a better understanding of the overall environment. My best advice if you choose this route is to RTFM (read the 'fine' manuals). My second best advice is Google.
Chapter 1 and 2 will serve you better as reference later on in your journey as you become profecient enough to actually care about tweaking your environment for features and performance.
Once all is installed and working, the book really starts with chapter 3. There's an extensive coverage of basic language features such as variables, arrays, functions, scope, comments, escapes, selection and repetition structures, etc.
You will gain some solid notions of intermediate level stuff with chapters on file handling, file uploads, session handling, data insertion and retrieval, authentication.
Some chapters bring you to a productive level with more advanced features like object oriented programming, templating (which with OOP offer good precursors to the concepts behind the MVC when you will learn about design patterns in more advanced texts), web services, regular expressions, error handling.
MySQL as well is covered to a workable level, I particularly liked that Jason Gilmore walks you through the creation of a database class to encapsulate your connection and access needs. It well illustrates some of the practical application of OO Programming in the real world. Most serious developers use similar classes in their day to day development.
There are other chapters in the book that may be of interest to some (networking with php, ldap, SQLite).
This is probably not the last php book that you'll need, but it's a great first step to prep you for more advanced subjects. Overall for the beginner this is a great bang for the buck.
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