Customer Reviews

Beginning PHP4

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I like this book and highly recommend it. It is good for people who are new to PHP but not so good for people who are new to programming. I've done a lot of programming in other languages and needed to learn PHP in a big hurry for a project that I was about to take on. This book got me up to speed fast. I'm inclined to think that a lot of the negative reviews are from people without any programming background. I agree this book is not the right place to start if you are a non-programmer. I've also done a fair amount of html prior to reading this book, I found that it's html section and php techniques for generating forms was really excellent, I learned some really great things!

As far as depth goes, such as discussing details of the functions. Well, that's what the php manual is for (www.php.net). Initially I tried to learn the language from the php manual alone but didn't get very far, I couldn't see the forest because the trees were in the way, eg too much detail without a big picture. What this book does is to focus on the big picture of how and why to do something. It also shows multiple approachs to the same problem and compares them so that you get an idea of the alternatives and trade-offs.

Starting from not knowing php to writing some very sophisticated programs... I learned it all with two books and the manual. The other book that I read is PHP Developers Cookbook. The two books are very complimentary, there is not that much overlap between them instead they fill each others gaps. Note that the "Cookbook" is more advanced and assumes that you already know a lot of php.

Okay, the one big gripe that I have is their lack of proof reading. They must have really rushed this to press. There are literally hundreds of errors and the errata sheet is incomplete. However it is easy to get past the errors as long as you don't make the assumption that the text is always correct. In other words, if something doesn't make sense then you should be suspicious of an error instead of always assuming that it's your lack of understanding.

The necessity of Rewriting the code examples is a little annoying, but the book can hardly be faulted for language changes that were made after the book was published. PHP is a rapidly moving target, no book will ever be current for very long. And besides, the best way to understand a program is to take it apart and rewrite it, that's why they are called "Examples". (most of the changes needed are trivial).

Mostly what you need to do is to change $varname to $_REQUEST['varname']

and that will fix it. If you are having trouble finding the correct variable then use

phpinfo();

to get a list of all of the available variables, then you just pick what you need from the list and put a $ in front of it.
(...)By the way, the code examples can be downloaded from their website which can save a lot of typing...

If you've been programming for a while, the pace of this book is too slow to read cover to cover. The best thing to do is read the first half of the book (through chapter 9) and then skip around to what interests you. As others have mentioned, you will have to modify the code in the examples to get them to work because of the use of globals. This is not impossible to overcome if you write the message board for the book at http://p2p.wrox.com. However, it is annoying. There are other errors too, but it doesn't take much in the way of trial and error to get around them. The three chapters on MySQL are the most useful. If you've worked with databases in other scripting languages, e.g. Perl, Python, or Ruby, it's simply a matter of looking up what you want to do. There are some good style examples on structuring PHP code - use of an "$action" variable to drive the behavior of the site from a single page. The book also stresses putting reusable code in include files. The author dismisses classes/objects as not really being useful in PHP, but the use of classes elimates the need for the "global" declarations in many of the common include files. All in all, this is an adequate book, but noting profound. If you have programming experience, this book will get you up and running quickly.

This book is very well written, but you should know that the code in the book is written with "register_globals" turned on in the php engine. This makes the code insecure and should be turn off. You have to alter to make it work.

Look at the errata for more info: http://www.wrox.com/books/errata/0764543644_errata.shtml

This book was an alright general introduction to PHP4 let down by a great number of inconsistencies between authors. They didn't introduce functions adequately in the latter parts of the book, for example in chapter 10 they start using new functions without any explanation of what they do or their usage, and the different authors didn't collaborate sufficiently as they use different ways of writing the same commands without any explanation (e.g. the echo "" and echo("") statements) and they also contradicted each other, for example again in chapter 10 the author uses typecasting while in a previous chapter we had been told this was unnecessary, and again no explanation is given as to why the author did this.

The examples are also very tedious and in some places extremely repetitive (chapter 10 repeats the same example ten times with very little change).

Overall a great dissapointment and it is also out of date as new PHP security means most examples will not work without changing to a weaker security setting.

Not recommended, there must be more consistent books about for PHP.

The book is out of date as it covers PHP4 before security changes were made. It is also very inconsistant later on, as the various authors seem to believe in very different conventions, for example early on they claim type casting is unnecessary, then in Ch. 10 they use it loads - without any explanation, also in Ch. 10 they start introducing new functions without any explanation of how they work or even what they do (they explain some but not others) and the examples are really tedious due to similarity in some parts. The different authors also type the same commands differently (e.g echo ""; and echo(""); - again without explanation, and they obviously didn't collaborate enough to ensure consistency.

Otherwise an ok introduction to PHP4, but I'm sure there are better guides out these that will be more consistent.

I was having headache when i read the book, that because the examples were all related to MATH . it's no use for building a real website . I feel sick of their explaination with more than pages, and just one example for the whole chapter .

If you hate MATH , dont buy this book .

The book was great. I learned from in-depth examples. The only problem I had with the book was that some of the examples didn't work. You would really have to troubleshoot your code. Which for the beginner that kinda stinks. If I had the chance again I would definitely buy the book. The authors did a great job.

I requested that my Parents buy me this book over two years ago. Sure I paid them for it but I demanded this book. I'm not quite sure why I did but at the time I was wanting to learn PHP and I was not happy with the way the O'Reilly books were written for Perl (2nd Edition) so I knew that I was not going O'Reilly for learning PHP4. Now that I've had this book and time has passed I would say that I have suggested this book to lots of people and they have all learned PHP alot easier then they would have from O'Reilly books.

I say go WNOR, Chris, et al. You all did a good job. I felt like the authors were sitting over my shoulder and giving me a one on one session each time I read the book. The examples were fun, understandable, and had a point them. They also helped me to have a better understanding in Programming in general. The next year, I had a C/C++ programming class and Aced it without a problem. You know, they say 9 out of 10 students fail their first programming class. I wasn't one of those nine thanks to this book.

I began php with two books, one being this wrox publication and the other a more advanced sams publication. The wrox publication was the fundamental lifesaver in my php learning. The examples were easy to follow. And wrox's p2p website and forums have proven to be a lifesaver again and again, providing a wonderful compliment to the book. It is not only a fabulous learning and how-to manual, but also makes a terrific reference. I would definitely recommend this book to the beginner. But not to sound like a complete advertisement! My experience with this book has truly been a positive one.

This book reads as if someone recorded a group of teen-aged programmers telling someone how to write PHP scripts, and then simply transcribed what they said into a book. The style of writing is so sophomoric and the pacing is so distracting that I found it almost unreadable.

The sentences are poorly constructed, and usually contain too many unnecessary words. I realize that the style is supposed to be casual, but it is possible to write in a casual style, without mixing metaphors, and adding words, in sentences like this one (from page 39):

"Once we've established, at a fairly basic level, what goes on under the hood of PHP, we will take a look at some of the building blocks of the language, and how we can use PHP to store information in our web pages."

First of all, is PHP like a car, or is like a building? Secondly, are we really going to learn how to store information in web pages? Don't you store information in files and databases and environment variables, and retrieve and display information on web pages? Perhaps the author of this
sentence meant that we will learn how to store information which we receive from users who have typed that information into forms on web pages.

The quoted sentence could have been changed to something like:

"In this chapter we will give a brief outline of how PHP works, and list some of its key features. We will also show how to display a web page which allows someone to enter information which the script will then store on a web server."

It has been pointed out to me that the phrase "building blocks" in that sentence might refer to the components of PHP, or alternatively it might refer to the features of PHP being used as the building blocks of a system. In that case my suggested revision for the sentence would have to be changed. In either case, the sentence is confusing.

I do not mean to single out this sentence in particular. This book is full of sentences like this.

I suppose the authors of "Beginning PHP4" know something about PHP, but they don't seem to know the first thing about constructing a proper sentence. While it might be true that programming books should be written by programmers, they should be edited by professional editors.

I usually buy the O'Reilly books, but my local bookstore was out of stock on O'Reilly PHP books, so I took a chance on this Wrox book. I now wish I had just gone to another store (and saved $00). I will certainly not buy another Wrox book again.

Syd Allan