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

Merits of PHP compared to Perl?

[SteweyGriffin]

I have to prepare a report at my job discussing the merits of Perl and PHP and would like some ideas for good points to put across in favor or against either one.

Personally I favor Perl as I think it can do much more but I'm not an expert by any means and I'd like to present some reasonable sounding arguments, possibly in front of people who are experts in Perl.

Any ideas?

Oh, and another question. I'm not 100% sure how Perl actually runs the Perl code. I know it gets compiled to P code, but I'm not sure at what stage this is done. Can anyone tell me how this works or give me a pointer to where I could find it?

As usual, thanks for your help Slashdotters.