Build Your Own Database-Driven Website

Chris Beasley writes "I have a PHP book that's 567 pages long. I have two SQL books: one has 377 pages; the other has 719. Yet I consider 295-page 'Build Your Own Database Driven Website using PHP & MySQL' by Kevin Yank more valuable than any of these books. Why? Because, while I may find only a quarter or, at best, half of these books useful on a regular basis, all 295 pages of Yank's new release are of value to me on a daily basis." Build Your Own Database-Driven Website Using PHP & MySQL, 2nd Ed author Kevin Yank pages 295 publisher SitePoint rating 5/5 reviewer Chris Beasley ISBN 0957921802 summary A tutorial-style book for beginning PHP/MySQL Programmers

Unlike the arbitrary structure exemplified by so many programmers' references, Build Your Own Database Driven Website using PHP & MySQL is written more like an instruction manual, with chapters arranged in the order in which you should use them.

The first chapter explains the installation of PHP and MySQL; the next two cover usage basics. In Chapter 4 you're already pulling information from your database and publishing it on the Web. Chapters 5-10 refine what you've already accomplished, and delve into advanced topics in both PHP and MySQL.

If you're familiar with Yank's original tutorial, on which he based this book, your familiarity will end with the closing pages of Chapter 10. Chapter 11 addresses the storage of binary data in MySQL, a topic that was of great interest to me personally as I'd never done it before. In keeping with the rest of the book, Chapter 11 is a step-by-step guide, and explains the storage of binary data in a practical, down-to-earth manner that inspires you to give the book's teachings a try. Already I'm searching for an excuse to build a system, just to experiment with what I've learned. Chapter 12 covers cookies and sessions in PHP. The usage of cookies and sessions is essential to any online authentication or shopping cart system, and this topic makes a great final chapter that complements the book's other lessons.

This book makes good on its promise to teach you everything you need to know to build a database driven Website, but fortunately for us the author decided to throw in a few extras -- these take the form of four reference appendices. Appendix A covers MySQL syntax, which, while covered throughout the book, is easily referenced through this well-organized appendix. Appendix B explains MySQL functions, while Appendix C covers MySQL datatypes in considerable detail, so much so that I found this information easier to use than the official MySQL online reference. Finally, Appendix D covers the PHP functions that are used with MySQL.

If you progress in your programming skills you'll eventually need to buy a complete programmer's reference for PHP, although you probably won't need to buy an SQL reference unless you start using a more robust database solution than MySQL. However, if you want to build your first database-driven website, or even if you have built one before but want a practical reference, I can't recommend this book highly enough. Build Your Own Database Driven Website Using PHP & MySQL will guide you step by step through the development process -- who could ask for more?

You can purchase Build Your Own Database-Driven Website Using PHP & MySQL, 2nd Ed from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Comments

This Book Changed My Life

[Anonymous Coward]

Before I read it I was successful and happy.

Now I'm a tired bitter old man.

Damn this book
Damn this book to hell

Who wouldn't?

[eenglish_ca]

Who wouldn't build their own database website. Imagine slogging through hundreds of pages of fixed html. Does anyone know of sites like these other than personal pages put up by newbies? All of my sites are at least dynamic using php.

Re:Who wouldn't?

[ozbon]

In fairness, sometimes it depends on whether your hosting service bungs in PHP etc. free, or at extra charge. It's all part of the pros and cons when it comes to dealing with hosting services.

Personally, I prefer the ones that do throw in mySQL/PHP/etc. in with the deal - but there's a lot out there that dont, EasySpace being one of them. Yeah, I used them for a while, but now I don't - but they still charge through the nose for mySQL and PHP stuff, as well as most other things.

Re:Who wouldn't?

[K.]

Preprocessing pages and serving static html is one way of coping with high CPU loads incurred by having a popular dynamic site. So as in everything, the best path is the middle path. Or so my teacher Steven Seagal tells me.

Re:Who wouldn't?

[jest3r]

when you actually start getting alot of traffic it is sometimes best to use static pages for as much content as possible .. of course these static pages are generated from information stored in a database ..

opening a database connection for every visitor on every page is suicide if you only have a single server .. and your site is featured on slashdot ..

Re:Who wouldn't?

[Carik]

Why would anyone NEED their personal site (ie, here's who I am, here are links to my friends pages, etc) to be dynamically generated? For that matter, why should a page be written to be dynamic if it only changes, say, every 6-8 months? I've seen a lot of people build their sites using php/flash/perl/java/etc when it could have been done more easily and just as effectively with plain html.

I'll grant you, though, that for a business page, or something that updates on a daily/weekly basis, static html is pretty stupid.

Re:Who wouldn't?

[jandrese]

It all depends on what you're doing. Most business pages (brochurepages) are actually quite static and would not need much automation.

On a counterpoint, some homepages have dynamic content of some sort that you just can't do with static HTML. It's all a matter of what you're doing, not who you're doing it for.

Also, some people put up private pages as a way of teaching themselves the ins and outs of running webpages. Those pages can quickly include all sorts of bells and whisles including dynamic content, flash, etc. Additionally, those sights can look good on a Resume since it shows the person has enough interest in the technology to play with it outside of the workplace.

Re:Who wouldn't?

[ncc74656]

Who wouldn't build their own database website. Imagine slogging through hundreds of pages of fixed html. Does anyone know of sites like these other than personal pages put up by newbies? All of my sites are at least dynamic using php.

It depends on what type of content you're putting up. I wanted consistent navigation from page to page and easier maintainability; server-parsed HTML is sufficient for that task. It also allows me to serve up either proper HTML and CSS for browsers that can handle it or broken, non-standard HTML for crappy non-standards-compliant browsers. While I use MySQL for logging server activity (when I dumped access_log into the database, the database was smaller than the text file that created it), the only "content" I've ever served up from it was statistics of how many tens of thousands of times infected IIS machines had tried to pass their bugs on to my server (done with server-parsed HTML and a shell script with the query). For mostly-static content on a small to medium website, is there any reason (other than "because I can") for shoving every website into a database?

All of my sites are at least dynamic using php.

Such as this one, which took forever to load because the images appear to have not been optimized? Looks like invalid HTML with a big table in it.

(Why do I get the sneaking suspicion I've just been trolled?)

Re:Who wouldn't?

[rreyelts]

opening a database connection for every visitor on every page is suicide

Rather, just about every serious web application requires database access, and yet they don't commit suicide. It's called connection pooling, and it is a standard feature on pretty much any application server nowadays.

I imagine most Slashdotted sites die from network starvation long before their machines come to a grinding halt.

Re:Who wouldn't?

[markv242]

"opening a database connection for every visitor on every page is suicide if you only have a single server .. and your site is featured on slashdot .."

Um, no.

Real database connection pools (say, JDBC) running through a real application server (say, Resin) instead of a compiled-into-Apache-interpreter (PHP), accessing a robust database (Oracle) can and will run at an extremely high speed even when heavily loaded via Slashdot, etc.

All of these "create your own database-driven site!" beginner books are really nothing more than terrible instructions about how to build half-assed applications that don't scale worth a damn. It's because of these "learn PHP and MySQL in 30 days!" pseudo-manuals that we even have the slashdot effect. If web application programmers were to take the time to learn real enterprise-level application coding, you wouldn't see absolutely false statements like "opening a database connection for every visitor on every page is suicide".

Re:Who wouldn't?

[zaxus]

Of course, convincing Mom and Pop to license Oracle for their recipe website might be a little difficult....

Re:Who wouldn't?

[b!arg]

Yeah because every startup has the money to put tens of thousands of dollars into their hardware. Not to mention the many thousands of dollars to purchase the high end software. Oh yeah, how about the cost of programming these? What? We have to be able to maintain it all too? Hmm...how much will one or two knowledgeable and experienced admins cost? How many hits do we get per day, per hour, per minute? God help us if we ever want to change something. I'd like to see that ROI...actually...no...I wouldn't.

Chapter 16

[SpanishInquisition]

Avoiding the "Slahdot Effect"

The thruth is...

[dfiguero]

that once you learn the basics of PHP and MySQL all books on SQL/MySQL and PHP just don't cut it. You would probably be better off with the online documentation from the respective websites and for those really though cases a PHP/MySQL Cookbook.

Re:The thruth is...

[gid]

I've run into the same thing. In fact, I've taken it one step further, I have NEVER felt a I needed a book to teach me PHP/MySQL, both projects have fantastic online documentation. If there's something that the PHP documentation doesn't tell me, chances are the user comments do. There hasn't been one feasible thing that I haven't been able to figure out with PHP or MySQL thru the online documentation.

The interesting thing is, I've recently have had to start learning Java / JSP / PL/SQL / Oracle. Documentation is a nightmare. There just doesn't seem to be one end all be all on stop shop for my Java documentation needs, there's about 20 relevant manuals that I need to sift through to find out one thing, and there's about 20 different ways to implement your site. Ok are we going to build our own tag libraries, conform to J2EE, use java beans, just do straight jsp, on what classes should we make and for what? What stuff should be stored in PL/SQL, etc etc etc. It's crazy.

PHP is a dream come true, ease of use wise. It may not be the fastest thing in the world since it's just a scripting language, but there's the Zend caching engine that can help quite a bit. There's just something to be said for reading PHP code from top to bottom and know exactly what's going on. And being able to pay a cheap PHP monkey to code your site for you, instead of paying an expensive Java/Oracle programmer with 10 years experience.

a tad forgetful are we?

[Anonymous Coward]

all 295 pages of Yank's new release are of value to me on a daily basis.

Maybe you just need a better long term memory.

sounds simliar

[drgroove]

to the PHP and MySQL Web Development book by Welling & Thomson, from SAMS.

Good to see more 'tutorial' style books coming out - its the real world examples that springboard a beginner's skill level w/ a new language.

I'd much prefer to see this type of tutorial book in the hands of a n00b than a straight-lexicon or syntax book w/o examples of actual apps you can build. Sounds like a good one, based on the review.

Sounds good...

[Randolpho]

... but aren't there already a bunch of books that do this? I mean, wouldn't a more useful book be one about *designing* a database driven site? Stuff like content management, implementing full text search, session tracking, user logins, site organization and navigation, that sorta thing?

I mean, do we really need *another* book that tells you how to program in PHP and how to use MySQL?

Anyway, from the review, I suppose this would be a good replacement for those books. I just think what we need is something more.

Re:Sounds good...

[drgroove]

... but aren't there already a bunch of books that do this?

Yes, but having a choice of books is helpful to beginners; especially considering that not every author's writing style or code examples work for every budding developer out there. Choice is good. There is still plenty of room for the improvements you sighted, tho, but I don't think that lack of coverage on those concepts in this particular book denigrates its quality or usefulness.

Re:Sounds good...

[odyrithm]

it would be nicer if people would spend a day of there life to look at postgresql... now I was one of the MySQL fanatics that hated pg.. how foolish I was.. trust me, all this hype over MySQL is totaly unjustified, postgresql is a far far better rdbms. Dont believe me? take a day to look up its features, you wont regret it.

Re:Sounds good...

[mark_lybarger]

one feature of MySQL is that it "runs" on Win32 platform a little easier than pgsql, but i totally agree with the need for people to consider postgresql. with the use of adodb for php (database abstraction layer), use of pgsql is much easier.

Re:Sounds good...

[ceejayoz]

perhaps it's the sucky perl-like syntax

Perl-like? It's C-like, if anything, which makes it easy for someone who has experience in C or Java to pick up.

or rather, I should say the plethora of built-in functions

What's wrong with lots of built-in functions?

so many PHP purists these days insist that you can't use PHP for templating any more (thus running contrary to the original purpose of the language) and that you have to print all your html with print statments inside a single tag.

I've never come across a competent PHP developer who has said that. Hell, the official PHP site has Smarty, a template engine.

Come on... there are some valid gripes about PHP, no need to go make up some.

Re:Sounds good...

[Raffaello]

"Perl-like? It's C-like, if anything"

And what sort of syntax does Perl have, lisp-like?
Perl has C-like syntax, so Perl-like is the same as C-like (i.e., it's easier for a machine to read than a human, so it sucks).

For doesn't-really-suck syntax, one has to look at something like Dylan, or SmallTalk, IMHO.

Re:Sounds good...

[Webmonger]

Your wish is granted: PHP4 has references. And I'm actually working with structures more complicated than associative arrays ATM.

Re:PHP Too slow

[odyrithm]

php is way to slow for big sites :*( unfortunately with out some state of the art cache.

obviously you dont know about this: http://apc.communityconnect.com/about.html

Affiliate link?

[Anonymous Coward]

Putting an affiliate link makes the review so much more credible.

All 295?

[ejaytee]

All 295 pages, every day? Wow... the only way this would be true for me is if I forgot how to count all the way up to 295 and had to make use of the page numbering.

Seriously, will somebody reset the hyperbole detector? Mine keeps going off.

Measurement of book length is meaningless

[MarvinMouse]

I have a PHP book that's 567 pages long. I have two SQL books: one has 377 pages; the other has 719. Yet I consider 295-page 'Build Your Own Database Driven Website using PHP & MySQL' by Kevin Yank more valuable than any of these books.

Just because a book is long, doesn't mean it's useful.

like the great quote

The Ten Commandments contain 297 words. The Bill of Rights is stated in 463 words. The Lord's prayer has only 67. The story of creation in the Bible uses only 200 words. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address contains 271 words. On the other hand, a recent Federal directive to regulate the price of cabbage contains 26,911 words.

I personally find, the bigger the book, the more difficult it is to navigate and the less useful it really becomes. Quick, short, to the point explanations are almost always better than long details drawn out explanations that I don't have the time or the desire to read.

save your money

[larry bagina]

I looked through this book at barnes & noble a couple weeks ago. I'd recommend skipping it, although it may be useful for some newbies.

Basically, it's a tutorial (build a php/mysql website in 10 steps!). There are plenty of online resources (like devshed) that do tutorials like this all the time. (Note to slashdot editors: devshed spell checks submissions!). If you like to read on the john, this book might be for you. Chances are, you'd be better off to save your money for a mysql or php reference book.

Nice, timely review - the book is out of print

[Anonymous Coward]

I just looked at Barnes and Noble and found the book is no longer available!

You know, it might be useful if Slashdot book reviews were limited to books that are currently in print!

Re:Nice, timely review - the book is out of print

[Derek Pomery]

Amazon still thinks it is

Re:Nice, timely review - the book is out of print

[mav[LAG]]

You can get it from the source where they also make the first four chapters available as a free download. My copy should be arriving any day now...

Better Solutions?

[webword]

Forget PHP. Use Whitespace! If that is too hard, install FrontPage! The real l337 h4x0r solution.

This book should be good because...

[Anonymous Coward]

it's based on a very popular article series he did for sitepoint.com and other sites. I dl'd and printed out all of those articles that comprise the base of the current book and they are dog-eared and well worn. I especially like his tone througout the articles (nice sense of humor) and concise coding style well explained. I will 'browse' this book at Bordersss if they have it and if I see new stuff I will buy it.

Re:HOWTO-Build a DIY DB-driven site

[KDan]

Wrong. Install MySQL first and then install apache and mod_php together.

Daniel

A bit of advice...

[tdvaughan]

"...all 295 pages of Yank's new release are of value to me on a daily basis." While regular bowel movements are to be encouraged, you'll find toilet paper to be more cost-effective.

Web Database Applications with PHP & MySQL

[The-Perl-CD-Bookshel]

I develop 'AMP' solutions and IMHO this book, in addition to the PHP cookbook, are the best two books you can buy on the subject. You can really tackle most any problem with these two books and if you cant, there is always IRC or as a last resort the documentation :)

Just how many sites need to be dynamic?

[British]

It seems too many websites out there have mile-long URLs(including huge session ID strings) and other gizmos only to deliver the same static content over and over again.

What ever happened simply to static web pages that are nice and simple, and dish out the data without all that overhead?

Re:Just how many sites need to be dynamic?

[ebyrob]

What ever happened simply to static web pages that are nice and simple, and dish out the data without all that overhead?

Or better yet a set of simple, concise data files and a batch method for converting it to static HTML after updates for display on the web. What's this internet coming to?

Re:Just how many sites need to be dynamic?

[fractalus]

If you've got no content, your site doesn't need to be dynamic. A static blank page will do.

On a more serious note, it depends on what the site does. Having built a fair number of sites--both for myself and, as part of my job, for big companies--I can say there are pros and cons to driving your site from a database.

Databases are primarily useful when you have a consistent structure to your content and you need to be able to update that content easily. When I built this site it was done from a database, but I used a script to build all the pages one time; it's a static site, because the content doesn't get updated. I'm in the process of rebuilding the main site now, and it really will be dynamic, because I want to be able to update the database with new content and have it automatically appear on the site.

But more importantly, there are advantages from a fully dynamic site that you just can't do with static HTML. Any kind of interactivity, be it searching, multi-step forms, or even checking on financial systems like I built with this site. You can't reasonably do that kind of thing without connecting with a database.

Sounds like this book is a good starter guide for folks looking to learn how to build dynamic web sites. It gets you to the point where you're ready to deal with establishing sessions, and once you're there, then you can really get the ideas flowing... you have to tools to do what you want, instead of being limited by what you know.

Re:Just how many sites need to be dynamic?

[Animats]

There are lots of good reasons for database driven web sites:

• Easier support for "124 people have accessed this site since January 1, 2000".
• Three words: "customized ad content".
• A new fortune every time!
• "Welcome back, (Your name here)".
• Different users, different prices.
• Kickbacks from database sales rep.
• Job security.

Amazon bad, BN good...

[teslatug]

The book is apparently not available at BN, so I checked Amazon, and they have it.

Damn...

[grub]

... I can't find the PDF on kazaa yet..

Re:HOWTO-Build a DIY DB-driven site

[mark_lybarger]

my personal preferance would be Tomcat/JBoss/Apache/postgresql. there's a lot of benefit to taking advantage of product which implement standards and even more benefit when those products are open source free as in beer and free as in speach.

Which effect?

[Sleepy]

> Avoiding the "Slahdot Effect"

Were you refering to the Slashdot-caused bandwidth spike?
Or did you mean the "I can't spell" Slahdot effect?

Sorry... it's so unclear what you meant.. :-)

Download the First Four Chapters

[TheAngryMob]

Sitepoint (the publisher) has them here. The downside is you have to give them your email address first.

This book misses the mark

[esconsult1]

One reason why PHP gets such a bad undeserved rap, is because much of the PHP code that's written out there today is a nightmare.

You have uncommented code with embedded HTML that is database specific. Don't get me wrong... if you have a small project that works with a quick hack, then that's ok.

With any modern PHP project, what's wrong with using templates, PEAR, and object oriented programming? Most PHP books out there tend to spin the mantra of PHP and MySQL or Postgresql without taking the time to show how to use PHP in a modern context where it deserves to be. Thus much PHP programming gets scoffed at because it tends to be unmaintainable.

I'm sorry, but at this point I'm unable to recommend almost any of the PHP books out there. They mostly encourange terrible PHP system development practices -- embedded HTML, database specific coding, non OOP development.

There are a few sites that are showing the light. phpclasses.org only has OOP based PHP programs and the tools you need to use templating, mailing, databases in a thoroughly modular manner, and dont forget the PEAR site which documents and make available the excellent PEAR classes for PHP.

A few other sites also are preparing PHP libraries and development environments that are a joy to work with.

For PHP public www information is better that 99% of the books out there, and in the case of this book... 100%

Re:This book misses the mark

[tcopeland]

Hmm.... I don't question your experience... but I've found that if a server app is written using classes and such it's much easier to go back and plug in a SOAP wrapper to the "business objects".

For example, GForge has a bunch of classes that we've wrapped via SOAP, so now a Java client can do something like:

Client c = new Client("my.gforge.host", "myproject");
client.login("tom,"fiddlesticks");
Bug[] bugs = client.getOpenBugs();

Fun stuff!

Yours,

Tom

Warning!! Lots of typos that stopps a learner cold

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi,

I bought this book a few months ago to learn just what the title says it teaches. Unfortunately, it had many, many typos in the code examples that resulted in me being stopped cold.

One would need to already know a lot about PHP to know what needed to be fixed. Sadly, there was no online "errata" for the errors that stopped me cold. I think there was an online errata, but it didn't list many of the errors that stopped me cold.

It was only due to my posting the non working code online and getting strangers who already knew PHP to point out what was wrong that I was able to proceed -- at least until the next non corrected error that stopped me cold again.

Finally, In disgust, I gave up and bought the Wrox book (by Welling?) that just came out with a second edition.

What's sad is there is no excuse for the lack of an online errata for the errors that stopped me codl time and time again. I had the latest edition of the book.

IMO, save your money and time -- buy the Wrox book instead and make PROGRESS learning PHP and MySQL.

Despite Assurances

[Oculus Habent]

Though slashdot was certain that I could:

You can purchase Build Your Own Database-Driven Website Using PHP & MySQL, 2nd Ed from bn.com.

Barnes and Noble assured me that, indeed:

Not Currently Available. A new copy is not available from Barnes & Noble.com at this time. A used copy may be available from our network of book dealers.

I cannot. There is one used copy of the book available. If they knew they had the only copy, it'd probably be on e-bay.

Re:This book isn't available.

[Cy Guy]

Did you ever think abuot a LOCAL bookstore

Well actually, most local bookstores that want to stay in business have stopped trying to beat Amazon and bn.com and decided to join them by offering used & hard to find books via their affiliated dealers programs.

Unfortunately, just one copy of the hardback version was (sold within the last few minutes while I was writing this post) available through bn's affilliate system, and none of either edition are available through Amazon's affiliates. Though the paper back version is available through Amazon.

If there are local stores out there that have the book available, they might want to consider selling the book through Amazon or bn.com. After all, listing (at least on Amazon) is free.

BTW NineNine, we miss you!

Your Answer: Moveable Type

[aaandre]

MT does just that and is widely used by the blogging community.

There are many plugins available for it, too.

All you need is CGI (perl) support on your server -- it doesn't require a database and the site it generates is based on static pages (partially) updated every time the admin makes a change.

Best PHP templates? Smarty!

[SailFly]

Does anyone here use Smarty? We love it, and have found it to be a wonderful template engine.
It has a great user manual, but I would welcome a good PHP book that deals with Smarty templates.

smarty.php.net

whatever, dude...

[pb]

PHP indeed borrowed a lot of language features from Perl, but its syntax is strictly C-like; no required braces, no embedded regexps, no magical, one-character variables, etc., etc.

I agree with you that PHP's functions are awkward, but I'm sure you can find a way to implement namespaces in PHP--PHP has classes, it has hashes, and it has an eval() function, so you can probably figure something out. What I really hate is how PHP handles variables and scoping--that's really criminal. Also, anonymous subroutines and closures would be nice to have...

I never really wanted to write as much PHP as I have, but I don't think it's difficult to be a competent PHP programmer--it's just like being a competent programmer. Just because a lot of people aren't doesn't necessarily mean that it's a problem with PHP. I admit that I'd rather be doing all this in Perl, though, because some of PHP's 'features' and version incompatibilities are a real pain sometimes. Maybe *that's* why it's hard to find competent PHP programmers...

There are tons of templating engines for PHP; I've basically hacked together my own solution as well. I haven't compared them, but doing everything in pure PHP seems pretty simple to me; it has an include() function, and that's really 99% of what you need.

So I agree with you that PHP has some serious problems, but I think I disagree with you about exactly what those problems are. :)

Wish I could say the same for Geschwinde & Sch

[mnemotronic]

Avoid "PHP and PostgreSQL - Advanced Web Programming" by Ewald Geschwinde and Hans-Jürgen Schönig [Sams 0-672-32382-6]. This book is infected with enough misprints and errors to render it unusable, but at 770+ pages, at least it's bigger'n yours. More 'spensive too. neener-neener-neener.

Re:Help with Mac OS X?

[avignonpieta]

a better book to pick up would be O'Reilly's Mac OS X for Unix Geeks, which has a section on setting up a DAMP system (Darwin, Apache, MySQL, Perl/PHP/Python). Pretty cheap too, you can get it from B&N or Amazon.

Job mystery solved

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems the only jobs available in PHP and MySQL is in writing books about PHP and MySQL because there are more books than there are jobs

Couldn't find, but found some gold

[candycrusher]

I went to my local Barnes and Noble and Borders to see if I could find this book, given the great review. No luck.

However I picked up a copy of Open Source Web Development with LAMP that's by the same guys that wrote Hacking Linux Exposed and it is really great. It has an extensive PHP chapter, but the real juice is in how it covers all of apache setup, perl, php, mysql, and even mason, HTML::embperl, and WML in one place. I'd never heard of it, but when I flipped through it on the shelf I couldn't put it down. I highly recomend it.