Professional PHP4 XML

SpinDoctor writes "Looking across the XML bookshelf today, it's easy to see many books discussing XML in a generic manner, or more commonly how to utilize XML within Java, .NET and Perl. Moreover, despite the broad based support that PHP has for XML, there has been no book that tackled the complexities and best practices, and at the same time offered a comprehensive resource to the XML-based APIs -- at least not until now. Read on for more about the best selling Professional PHP4 XML." Read on for the complete review. Professional PHP4 XML author Luis Argerich, Ken Egervari, Matt Anton, Chris Lea, Charlie Killian, James Fuller pages 945 publisher Wrox Press rating 9 (on a scale of 10) reviewer SpinDoctor ISBN 1861007213 summary In-depth and concise guide to using XML and related technologies within the PHP language

Introduction

Over the years, XML has not only become a useful way to represent and transmit data in an application independent way, it has also become an integral part of virtually every component within an enterprise application and developer tools that we use everyday. Until two years ago, PHP has often been neglected when it came to extending the core PHP libraries to include any XML capabilities. Even further, there has often been a lack of written resources to guide PHP developers to learning these technologies as it pertains specially to the PHP platform.

Over time, however, many committed open-source programmers have developed extensions for PHP to include SAX, DOM, XPATH and XSLT support. Even further, many PEAR contributors and Sourceforge projects have included greater XML support for WDDX, XML-RPC, SOAP, Apache Xindice and many other XML-based technologies and applications. As new APIs were released, PHP really started to become a powerful platform to develop applications that were capable of solving many enterprise business problems. These improvements provided PHP with the power and functionality needed to compete with platforms like Java, .NET and Perl to create the open-source scripting language of choice, providing an easy-to-use and a powerful set of capabilities to developers all across the world.

The Scoop

True to its title, Professional PHP4 XML is a rich guide and resource to using XML technologies within the PHP platform for intermediate to expert developers (spanning 945 pages). Although the book is intended for seasoned programmers looking to enrich their XML-related skills, the book does in fact include a primer on the core syntax and capabilities of the PHP language and fundamentals of XML to ensure the reader is able to understand and appreciate the book's content. Also, given the clear and concise writing style and the thoroughness of the book's content, novice programmers will be able learn a great deal and follow along naturally.

Unlike many books that briefly discuss a given technology and provide simple, but working examples, Professional PHP4 XML goes beyond these base requirements by supplementing the concepts and code examples throughout the book with a wealth of fascinating and useful information. The book accomplishes this by engaging the reader with innovative solutions to common, reoccurring problems as well as not so common problems that you'll find in the real world. In addition, each chapter provides a great deal of insight into:

• The overall architecture of the technology/standard itself,
• Clear design goals when using that particular technology
• Best practices to help the reader avoid common pitfalls, and
• Some heads up information on future changes in the XML libraries as best as can be predicted by the authors.

Each chapter also explores the various consequences to using a particular technology within an organization and how XML aids developers in simplifying the overall design and maintainability of enterprise applications. In a nutshell, this book enlightens the reader to improve their design techniques and current programming models rather than looking at trivial examples and function definitions that many sites on the web already provide.

The material itself is very well organized and flows in a logical progression that you'd naturally expect. The XML Fundamentals chapter provides the reader with the basic knowledge of data representation, markup languages and an extensive coverage of the syntax, rules and terminology of the XML 1.0 specification. It also provides a primer on topics such as DTDs, XML schema and namespaces.

The next chapter is a very rich catalog of all the XML vocabularies and standards developed prior to the book's publication. It provides an introductory coverage of markup languages like WML, SVG and RDF and parsing and transformation technologies like SAX, DOM and XSLT. Essentially, almost all derivatives are covered to provide the reader with 'the big picture,' which is commonly missed from many books.

The book continues with very detailed discussions on the core XML technologies: SAX, DOM, XPath and XSLT. It is designed to provide the reader with the theoretical concepts as well as the practical coding techniques and examples spanning just over 260 pages (not including the appendices at the back of the book). Thus, readers are not required to purchase a book on the general XML technologies or a book specifically pertaining to DOM or XSLT as Professional PHP4 XML covers each of the topics in very lengthy detail. Essentially, this book can pretty much stand alone by itself, but if you want a nice professional taster to PHP, then this book's parent: Professional PHP4 Programming is a good bet. You may also want to read this book's sibling: Professional PHP4 Multimedia Programming, which is replete with full case studies using PHPs multimedia extension libraries to build dynamic PHP front ends.

The last chapters of the book also feature detailed discussions on 'Syndicated Content' with a practical bent, inside insight on 'XML storage' and a case study to develop a calendar server using 'XML-RPC'. Another highlight of the book is the comprehensive reference section, including: PHP4 XML Language reference, Installation reference, SAX, DOM, XSLT and Xpath references and a primer on Object-Oriented programming with PHP.

What's To Consider?

Although the review has been fairly positive up to this point, there are some minor problems with the book. First, some chapters were written better than others, as is the same with all multi-author books. Since Wrox strives to deliver up-to-date books on bleeding-edge technologies, it only makes sense that several authors must collaborate to deliver such a comprehensive book (also considering no single individual is an 'expert' at all these technologies). However, WROX has ensured that there is a consistent flow between the chapters to align each of them with the overall vision for the book. This is an evolving trend with new Wrox titles as we can see this from their new releases.

The last negative aspect of the book, although at no real fault to the authors or the publisher, is the chapter on SVG graphics. Although fairly good, this chapter will probably not be useful for many of the readers. Even now, there has not been a wide demand for the use of SVG graphics and many older browsers cannot even support them. With time, however, this chapter might prove to be more useful in the future.

Summary

Overall, whether you are a novice or highly skilled PHP programmer, Professional PHP4 XML will provide you with the very best in-depth and concise guide to using XML and related technologies within the PHP language. Perhaps you think you know XML very well, even within the context of PHP, but this book might surely surprise you with information that could only be provided by the experience gained through these XML-pioneering authors. I must say that Wrox and the authoring staff have done a wonderful job delivering such a great book and that I would sincerely recommend this book to any aspiring to advanced PHP developer.

You can read a sample chapter from the book online, and you can purchase Professional PHP4 XML from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.