PHP4 Web Development Solutions

honestpuck writes "Wrox Press seem to have become masters at putting together volumes from a large number of authors. This 600-page volume is another example. This way of working does have some drawbacks, there is a little repetition of some basic stuff throughout the book, but not enough to truly detract from it." Read on for the complete version of honestpuck's review. PHP4 Web Development Solutions author Raj Kumar Dash, Bryan Waters, Alison Gianotto et. al. pages 601 publisher Wrox Press rating Fair reviewer Tony Williams ISBN 1861007434 summary Mid to high level exposition of web site development in PHP

In brief: The book, after some expository material, details 11 projects of increasing complexity. They use PHP, MySQL, PEAR::DB, Smarty and PHPLib. The target audience, according to the book jacket, are programmers who already have a good knowledge of PHP, SQL Databases and XML. Frankly, I think they overdo the amount of experience you need to use and benefit from this book. If you are on top of all those topics well enough to consider yourself "professional" then this book may be too simple. If, on the other hand, you are, like me, conversant with PHP and SQL but would like to take yourself up to "professional" use of technologies like XML, templating and WAP enabling then this book will be good.

What's Good About This Book

The book is stuffed full of code examples -- and while you can download them in a ZIP file of over 3Mb you shouldn't think of this book as a "cookbook" as such. It shows various methods for performing most of the tasks you need to build solid backend web site systems to deal with a large variety of data. The projects cover importing and exporting of XML, messaging systems, forums, content management, using templates for both HTML and WML, search facilities and both simple and complex content management among other topics.

The projects are well designed. I'd have to say that among the 11 projects most web site requirements are covered somewhere. The code is well engineered and some thought has gone into making it readable, understandable and useful. The explanatory material is well written, if too short.

One thing I did appreciate about this book is how much they left out. No coverage of PHP fundamentals, SQL fundamentals and simple stuff like web forms might be covered once, at most. I certainly didn't need another book on my shelves explaining the basics.

What's Bad About This Book

My largest criticism of this book is one shared by too many modern titles for computer programmers; there is too much explanation and too much repetition. The section on SQL is the perfect example. Most projects contain some tables describing each database table, a diagram of the relationships and then the full SQL required to build them, their indices and some example data. For their proposed target audience this is way too much information, and as it is safe to assume that everyone who buys this book has a decent 'net connection, why put a printout of SQL available online in a PHP book? I could have easily written the SQL myself and having it in the book doesn't make it much easier and since it was available online it was a total waste of space.

I also have to take exception to, an (admittedly short) chapter devoted to installing and configuring PostNuke. It gives you no more information on this simple task than the online documentation. As someone who has installed PostNuke a couple of times and never needed any assistance beyond the readme files (and the first was long before I considered myself a good PHP programmer) I felt this was a complete waste of space and not "web development" at all.

My final criticism is once again shared by too many modern titles, there isn't really enough discussion of the design decisions and complications. There are enough code examples and walk throughs to satisfy anyone, but not enough key design decisions are discussed at all, with only a few short examinations of any real design problems. I would have appreciated some walk throughs of such things as code that was too slow, problems with race conditions, methods for mixing static and generated parts of a site and all the real world stuff that intrudes when your site gets slashdotted and that code that was so neat with a hundred visitors a day becomes a thousand. Then show how the code they provide is better, avoids the problems and how to get my code to the same state. Since this book is "professional" a little more real world, please.

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Comments

bawls

[Anonymous Coward]

missed fp but you can still clean my bunghole with a nice tongue bath.

Re:bawls

[LostCauz]

hah

PHP

[Anonymous Coward]

PHP = pretty hot poop

fp?

[Anonymous Coward]

Right!

opps - got fp and I wasn't even trying

[Anonymous Coward]

$$$exygirl...I mean ekraut, has a filthy man-clit. By coincidence, my accidental fp is dedicated to the hard working members of the CLIT on this troll tuesday.

The Best Solution: Impeach Bush et al. +1

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are not part of the solution, then you are part of the problem

Thank you and have an Ashcroft_free day!

Cheers,
W00t

Re:The Best Solution: Impeach Bush et al. +1

[Anonymous Coward]

Impeach Bush? That's a bad idea if you start to think about it.

Let's examine the facts. North korea, pakistan, and India all developed their nuclear weapons while Bill clinton was in charge. The same bill clinton that did nothing substantial wrt Osoma Bin Laden, even when Syria offered to hand him over.

Yes, it was bill clinton who sat around pulling his pud while Saddam kicked out weapons inspectors, and increased his oil output from 500,000 barrels, to 1 million, to 2 million (virtually the same level as pre-war!) with no weapons inspectors to watch what was happening.

Bill clinton, who ordered military strikes (without asking the UN) against Iraq onlyto temporarily distract the media while he was being impeached.

Maybe you don't like Bush. Fine. But don't hate him for having to clean up after clinton, and be damn glad Al Gore's not making the decisions.

What about PGP4?

[Anonymous Coward]

Any news?

Gah Get off the site or Mirror the Source Code!

[Rares Marian]

There I said it!

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