Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:  
Summary: This book covers plenty territory well, and no problem with excess!
Comment: This has been a great book for me. I've been using & tweaking PHP applications for a few years, and recently had occasion to build one. The fact that this book could also refresh my MySQL skills peaked my interest.
I was impressed with the nice examples, long enough to show the main idea, yet other reviewers are right, there is not much here in the way of fullout precanned applications.
I like that this book seems to be organized so that rather than just read it from cover to cover you can dive in and learn from any particular section. The examples can can be downloaded from the Apress site. At times, when printed examples left details out it would be nice if those details would be included in the down-loadable examples (.css files are used in the HTML_Table demos, but never shown or down-loadable).
After browsing the MySQL sections I was able to create and manipulate the db I wanted in no time.
This book covers lots of ground, I was impressed with the completeness of PHP topics, including things you might not expect, like Smarty templates and the Data abstraction of PDO.
Contrary to other reviews, this book is still not a complete PHP reference manual, it's not meant to be. But if you have this book and a link to a PHP reference website you'll be fine!
Customer Rating:
Summary: This is not a book to learn php, its just a dictionary of functions
Comment: If you plan to learn php from this book, i suggest you start looking for another, this is just a dictionary about all terminolgy and commands regards php, but with no excercices!!! well.. there are a few lazy excercises. Its only a description of the methods i mean.. if you are reading about the function echo() you will read something like. "ok, you should use echo in this way "echo "this book sucks", echo is for show you some info on screen, or if you are reading about loops, like for.. "ok. for is for looping! like 1 to 10".. that's it! now you are an php expert!!!.. if there was a posibility to rate this as -5 i would.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A really good PHP introduction book
Comment: First off, this book is completely useless to you if you have do not have adequate OOP programming background. It jumps around different topics and does not really explain why things are arranged a certain way. This book pretty much assumes you have knowledge of either C, C#, Java techniques - which makes PHP extremely easy to understand. If HTML is all you have under your belt, this is probably a terrible book to buy.
Coming from an adequate background, this book introduces plenty of useful features of PHP and offers a good guide for reference and parameters. Since the book is titled PHP and MySQL, it is expected that the reader should know basic SQL syntax to understand how PHP works with a database.
Overall, this is a good starter book on a very broad topic and it has gotten me started on writing my own scripts.
Customer Rating:
Summary: 37 Chapters, 3 Books in one, and a must have desktop reference.
Comment: This is as it states for the Novice to the Professional and that is completely true.
If you are new to PHP or if you know PHP well this book is for you. Great for beginners
and a reference for the professional to turn to again and again.
The foundation of the web is simple database back ends and interactive web page front ends.
MySQL is an Internet standard back end database and it's ease of use combined with the power of PHP
make the 2 a great combination to construct web databases easily and powerfully.
Gilmore guides the reader step by step from installation to basic functions, and finally to practical uses
for PHP and MySQL.
But wait a minute, Gilmore adds two more things. He sneaks small chapters in the middle of his book on
SqlLite and PDO. For those thinking that MySQL is a bit too much for their small project then turn to SqLite.
Gilmore explains how to install and use SqLite quickly. If you are a programmer and are familuar with using
Microsoft's ADO for database connections, then you can turn to PDO (PHP Dataobjects). PDO provides the
power and simplicity to connect to various databases that you may have at your disposal.
One of the great sections in the book is Gilmore's explanation of how to do Object Orientated Programing
in PHP. Starting with PHP 5 you can harness the power of PHP to deal with you program objectively. Object
Orientated Programming is mentally the way to go as you can plan, organize, and assemble your code logically.
Other chapters of interest include how to effectively use Arrays, Authentication, File Uploads, PHP and LDAP,
Secure PHP, Securing MySQL, Practical Database Queries, and Importing and Exporting data.
If you do any work with PHP at all, be sure to check out this book. It will pay for itself in full.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The only PHP and MYSQL book you'll need!
Comment: This book is geared for three types of readers I believe (a rarity among books). First are people who have no experience in programming or web development whatsoever, the second are people who have worked in other languages whether be on the desktop or the web, the third type are people who already have some basic PHP and/or MYSQL experience and want to further their knowledge into intermediate topics. How can a book accommodate so many types of readers? Well, being slightly over 800 pages helps and also this book is very well written and organized and focuses on all the important topics.
It's basically split into three parts (even though it does not say it specifically). The first part comprises of basic PHP skills (installing, syntax basics, functions, OOP and regular expressions), the second part are intermediate to advanced topics (PEAR, authentication, networking, web services, SQLite and PDO) and the third part covers the basics and some intermediate topics of MYSQL (installing, data types, MYSQL and mysqli extensions, stored procedures, triggers, views and transactions).
The book basically covers everything you need to know about PHP and MYSQL for most of your needs. Unless your going to be writing large, enterprise applications on a daily basis (most of us will not be), it really is the only book you should need.
If you're a novice, don't be scared of the size of the book or how many topics it covers. The author assumes no prior knowledge and starts you from the very beginning with easy to understand examples that step you through everything you need to get going. It covers the latest version of PHP (version 5.1) which includes PDO (PHP Data Objects) which provides a data abstraction layer to help connect to other database other than MYSQL (DB2, SQL Server, ORACLE, etc.) , and built-in functions for database commands.
This is a book I highly recommend and should be in your library if you want to learn PHP and MYSQL effectively.
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