Customer Reviews

PHP Cookbook

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The main preoccupation of this book is finding solutions to common PHP programming problems. It contains a series of instructions on how best, programmers and/or web designers, who monitor dynamic web contents could apply scripting language. This book would arouse the interest of anyone who already knows the fundamentals of PHP.
Its main drawback is that it is overtly abridged. Fledging PHP followers may criticize it for lacking the type of depth and practical application that non-advanced learners would want. Still, it is not a bad book to spend your wad on.

Sklar and Trachtenberg bring a great depth of programming experience to this incredibly useful cookbook. The clever code concoctions presented here have been refined by them in massive, real-world applications serving millions of users. If you have used some of the best sites ever delivered on the net, you have probably already used thier code. If you want to know how it is really done, buy this book!

Like having the professor at my side. Articulate. Full of good ideas and helpful explanations. Must have for programmers!

Great book! Full of helpful info and easy to understand. Wonderful asset to have.

Most books cover commands and functions as though they were disembodied topics and don't relate them to the real world.

PHP Cookbook must be written by a "real developer" because he addresses actual everyday issues and illustrates practical solutions that you can use in your own applications.

I highly recommend this book.

- Hank Castello
compusolver.com

If you are completely new to PHP, just forget about this book!
If you are looking for complete programming solutions, do so as well!
However, if you have some basic experience with PHP and MySQL this book is just great.
This book deserves the word "cookbook" as it contains over 600 pages of receipts (do not expect big explanations, but just snippets of code), which will help you to solve many problems. And the best of this book - in my personal opinion - is, that by reading it, you will find a lot of problems/solutions/ideas you have not thought about before.
Be warned: This book is not a real "help" for anybody who looks for the easy solution, but it will definitely help YOU to develop your site and develop yourself.
Just buy it - it's well worth the money and if this book won't pay out, none will!

I have been programming PHP for a couple of years, and have lots of books on the subject. IMHO, I felt like this book serves the role of a "cookbook" very nicely. The contents are organized by language function via chapters (i.e. strings, numbers, arrays, regex, forms, classes, db, security, XML, etc...) which makes it convenient to find what you are looking for. Within each chapter, are very specific "Problem" and "Solutions" which contain simple code snippets (like 10 lines or less) and a description of what it does. Most problems are solved within one page. It is really concise and to the point. The index is comprehensive so it is straightforward to lookup the issue you are having, find the problem / solution and get on with your coding. You don't have to read thru lots of code or descriptions of why somebody setup a display template or complicated object. Look up your problem, read a quick solution, and BOOM, you're done and back to implementing it in your code.

I have read some other reviews for this book here that recommend the Wrox book, stating this one is too simple. I don't agree with this. The Wrox book appears to me to be another "... let's show you a bunch of full blown application examples ..." book to me, similar to the classic Welling and Thomson SAMS published text. The "cookbook" will not teach you the language, nor is that its intent; it assumes you know what you are doing.

This book is exactly what it says it is, a cookbook. If you need a quick solution to specific coding problems, at a fairly advanced level, it is a really good reference.

This book has been a lifesaver for me. As is the case with all those in the Cookbook series, this book is filled with practical examples. This isn't a tutorial book, but honestly, this book combined with the online docs were all I needed to build my own web site based around PHP. I definitely encourage you to buy this book if you're hoping to learn PHP!

An excellent cookbook, following the old O'Reilly's tradition in the field. The recipes are clean, concise and elegant; the authors try to solve real world, common problems. Unlike other outdated books, the code is designed with PHP 4.2 or above in mind. A valuable asset for any developer, it assumes a decent understanding of PHP

This book is a collection of smallish code snippets that don't go into depth, but may be useful for your programming needs if you have very basic PHP knowledge.
If you want a truly indepth cookbook with
full blown practical solutions that you
can reuse in your own applications, then
you must own a copy of the "PHP web development
solutions" book from Wrox.
I won both these books, and i have benefitted from reading the two...