Professional PHP4

Henry Birdwell contributes the following review of Wrox Press's Professional PHP4. Read on for his impressions, and to see if this book is right for your own dynamic web programming tasks. Professional PHP4 author Luis Argerich et al pages 975 publisher Wrox Press rating 9 reviewer Henry Birdwell ISBN 1861006918 summary Comprehensive print resource for working PHP programmers.

PHP is an open source server-side HTML-embedded web scripting language for creating dynamic web pages. Outside of it being browser-independent, PHP 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 backend network using a multi-tiered approach.

Almost an year since its release, this book has stood the test of time, and proved to be what it promised -- an up-to-date, advanced book on PHP -- a category in which there are very few worthwhile entries to date.

It provides a solid, fast-paced drill on the rudimentaries of PHP (although the fast-paced installation instructions come in the form of classic compendia -- worth 100 pages) for seasoned programmers, before it plunges head straight into the more advanced areas of the language. Each chapter reads a bit like a tutorial on a particular area of advanced PHP development.

If you are a competent programmer in just about any other language or have grappled with HTML before, then this book will teach you PHP from scratch . It will also introduce you to many of the more advanced areas of PHP programming, and is a treasure trove for information on diverse tasks possible with the language.

Notable topics include:

• Object Oriented Programming
• Sessions and Cookies
• Coding an FTP Client
• Sending and Receiving Email and News
• Networking and TCP/IP
• Non-Web Programming (including GTK)
• PHP and XML
• PHP and MySQL/PostgreSQL/ODBC
• Security
• Multi-tier development
• Optimisation

The code for the examples presented in the book is available for download, from the publisher's web site.

Although this book is reasonably complete, it lacks sufficient depth for experienced PHP developers who want to wade into the depths of specific PHP related tasks. Having said that, the publisher has provided information (of course at a separate cost) on specific areas with their second level PHP titles -- Professional PHP4 XML , Beginning PHP4 Multimedia Programming , Beginning PHP4 Databases and Professional PHP Web Services .

Suffice to say that the book has packed together a lot of diverse information (in 975 pages).

Related Links

• The official PHP web site
• Zend - the PHP scripting engine

You can purchase Professional PHP4 from bn.com. (You may also be interested in the Slashdot review of Professional PHP XML of a few months ago.) Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Comments

Re:Using PHP on a professional site

[onion2k]

Yahoo recently started using PHP to run their site. PHP is not just another toy language to tinker with, its a very capable tool. Don't confuse 'easy to use' with 'not powerful'.

When you make a complete enterprise site, you use the language that will give you the most advantage for maintainability and design.

Exactly. PHP often fulfills that need.

This book is great

[mr_z_beeblebrox]

PHP is a great solution for small to mid size businesses. Designing server based database apps is easy and they can run on Linux/MySql (duh!) which is a great kick in the TCO for a small/mid size biz. While I agree with the earlier flame regarding PHP in the enterprise I do think it works pretty well for business apps just not with thousands of users.

One thing I feel is missing is the ability to USE the host system. If I could access serial devices for example I could have a pc as a database server and one as a cash register, then I could have a serial based cash drawer at the PC being controlled by the server (this is a fairly common POS setup) this would be very useful. (I know I can use Perl to do it)

Re:Using PHP on a professional site

[Synn]

I've been using php for about 5 years professionally and have actually been looking into using Java, mostly because I'm interested in the concepts behind MVC design.

But one of the things php has given me over the last 5 years is total rock solid stability. I mean, I've hacked up some complete crap code over the years but I've never once had a php related crash(and apache only ever crashed when we tried integrating Cold Fusion into it).

In testing Java servlets I have gotten out of memory errors in a database app I've written, but that could very well have been a lack of knowledge on my part(maybe I had the server misconfigged). I'm reading up more on admining/designing for Java now and will do more serious tests in the future.

But don't dismiss php as a toy language. The code you create can be messy, but it's rock solid stable. 5 years of 80k+ lines of code without any crashes is nothing to laugh at.