Professional PHP4: Amazon.ca: Luis Argerich, Deepak Thomas, Devon O'Dell: Books

Product Description

Book Description

PHP is an open source, server-side HTML-embedded web-scripting language for creating dynamic web pages. Outside of being browser-independent, it offers a simple and universal cross-platform solution for e-commerce, complex web, and database-driven applications.

Professional PHP4 will show you exactly how to create state of the art web applications that scale well, utilize databases optimally, and connect to a back-end network using a multi-tiered approach. This book also aims at teaching PHP by coding - among other things - FTP clients, e-mail clients, some advanced data structures, session management, and secure programming.

What does this book cover?

The whys and wherefores of PHP4

PHP installation on *nix, Windows, and MacOS X

Sessions and cookies, coding FTP clients, network-related function calls, and directory services

PHP support for LDAP

Multi-tiered development using PHP

PHP's interaction with XML

PHP with MySQL

PHP with PostgreSQL and ODBC

Securing, optimizing, and internationalizing PHP applications

PHP extension libraries

A real world employee directory, an online library application, and a GTK interface to the application

Case studies on a user privilege system and a multi-tiered WML-based shopping cart

From the Publisher

This book is a resource for working PHP developers who want to take their skills to the next level. Although it assumes a conceptual familiarity with programming and databases in general, anyone who knows PHP enough to code and maintain small web applications can use this book. We also assume an interest in designing large web sites and general network programming to make full use of this book.

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Customer Reviews

37 Reviews

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

Average Customer Review

4.4 out of 5 stars (37 customer reviews)

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5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, Jun 23 2003

By

"darksk8er" (Oregon USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Professional PHP4 (Paperback)

I just bought this book in my local BORDERS, and I gotta say this is by far the best PHP book out there. Took me 2 hours to decide which booh to buy, and in the end, this was the best.
Extensive professional explanations and it's well worth the money.

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3.0 out of 5 stars OK, but sloppy, Mar 25 2003

By

Rohan Parkes (St. Kilda, Vic Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: Professional PHP4 (Paperback)

Having previously read Wrox's Professional ASP Programming, I tried this book, hoping for something of equal merit.

This volume is has some decent material, but is marred by a tendecy to sloppiness.

Firstly, as other reviewers have noted, there are too many authors (count 'em - 16!), which is unnecessary, and leads to inconsistencies in presentation. The book could quite easily have been authored by a single writer. There are only a few chapters that required specialist knowledge.

For example, the early chapters are quite good at advising the reader on PHP settings. Since there's no option explicit in PHP,the author correctly advises the reader to increase their error setting to report unused variables. Later, however, much of the code uses uninitialised variables. This is particularly the case in the chapter on form handling, the approach to which is too crude, and uses form variables directly in code, whereas a better approach would be to capture them and process them using isset(). The isset() function isn't even covered in this chapter,but is used correctly in other chapters.

Secondly, while the converstational tone of Wrox books is often appealing, it can also be a problem at times. The presentation is not always comprehensive enough, and Wrox authors have a tendency to give overly clever examples.

Strangely, there's no reference section. I found some of the explanations sloppy and confusing, especially the section of session variables. (I still can't get the WAP application to work properly.)

Thirdly, the chapter on OO design leaves the reader stranded. After a decent theoretical discussion, the writer informs the reader that there will be no code examples, as the reader now knows enough theory to work an example out for themselves! If I've paid for the book, I don't really want to have it set homework for me.

Fourthly, there are an annoying number of errors in the code. Many of these are corrected in the online errata, but there are quite a few that aren't at present. Furthermore, some of them are not typos, but seem to be the result of misconceptions on the part of the writer. This tends to reinforce the impression that some of the authors are relatively inexperienced.

Lastly, there are a large number of errors in the downloadable code. I suppose supplied code should be seen as a bonus, but it's poor quality control, and greatly adds to the user's annoyance.

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3.0 out of 5 stars Too many cooks spoil the broth, Mar 14 2003

By

Jason (Robbinsville, NJ United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Professional PHP4 (Paperback)

There are a lot of good concepts here but many of them are poorly explained. This book has about a dozen authors and you never are able to settle down and feel comfortable with the way any of the chapters are written. Check out Programming PHP as an alternate.

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Most recent customer reviews

2.0 out of 5 stars Not impressed: they don't know who their audience is
In reading this book, it's clear to me that the authors don't have a clear focus on who their audience is supposed to be and what they are trying to accomplish. Read more

Published on Mar 5 2003 by Beth

4.0 out of 5 stars A Great PHP Book
In simple words - a great book. If you are looking to dive into some serious developing with PHP, this book could definitely help you find a path. Read more

Published on Jan 8 2003 by Farhan