PHP and MySQL Web Development, 2nd Edition

honestpuck writes with the short review below of Sams' PHP and MySQL Web Development, 2nd Edition, which he says is aimed at "someone who has programmed before needs to know about both PHP and MySQL," and a good book for the intended audience. Read on for his thoughts on the book. PHP and MySQL Web Development author Luke Welling & Laura Thomson pages 815 publisher Sams rating 9 reviewer Tony Williams ISBN 067232525X summary New edition to for an excellent guide to PHP and MySQL

There is a good review of the first edition of this book here on Slashdot. For this second edition, I would add that Welling and Thomson have updated extensively and improved slightly a book that may well be the classic text on the topic.

PHP and MySQL are probably the most pervasive add-ons to Apache web servers across the web. Certainly they are both easy to acquire and common on a large range of web hosting systems, including several extremely low-cost ones. They also fit together extremely well.

This book demonstrates just how well. It starts out with a quick course in PHP (OK, 160 pages is hardly quick but it seems to move along at a good pace), follows it up with a brief look at MySQL before a short digression on E-commerce leads into building authentication and secure systems with the two tools (a marvelous place to start when you're thinking about commercial-grade web systems).

Then, after some more on PHP, the final section covers some large projects, a shopping cart, email service, mailing list manager and web forums. The final chapter in this section is new for this edition and covers XML and SOAP.

The new edition has been updated extensively. All scripts work now perfectly in PHP 4.3

I like this book a great deal. Even after a fair amount of time with the previous edition I still find it useful. It is well structured for finding what you need, well written, and has few typos. (Though there are still some, including ones in code examples -- when will authors learn to work straight off running code into the manuscript and keep godforsaken editors away from it? Brian Kernighan managed it twenty-five years ago.)

This would not be the best book if you had little programming experience, nor would it be the best book if you had a fair amount of PHP experience.

You will want to have some program design experience and preferably some experience with database design as these are given short shrift. The book also lacks examples and discussion of some of the less database intensive parts of PHP and some of the more obscure tasks you may need to perform. It covers what someone who has programmed before needs to know about both PHP and MySQL while informing on methods of using both to build practical and sturdy web applications. If that sounds like the book you want then I heartily recommend this volume to you.

You can purchase PHP and MySQL Web Development 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

Oh dear lord not again!

[glwtta]

As someone aptly pointed out about seven PHP/MySQL book reviews ago: There are three things the world doesn't need more of - cars, people and "Developing webapps with PHP and MySQL" books.

I know nothing will stem the tide of these, for all intents and purposes, xeroxed books, but I can at least implore (nay, beg) the people here to please, please stop sending in inept reviews/advertisements for them. There is just no damn reason for it.

Re:Oh dear lord not again!

[rycamor]

I think what we really need is a PHP/MySQL for Dummies book (or am I too late?). Then, we need the Video Professor to offer a full suite of PHP-MySQL lessons which are free if you are not fully satisfied, and we need a monthly magazine devoted to PHP/MySQL, perhaps we can call it phpMyMag, or something catchy like that. All of these wonderful resources will discuss various ways one can do such amazing things as

1. Jump-Start your Web Development Career!!!
2. Create Webpages which Display Data From Databases.
3. Take User Input From HTML Forms and Store in Databases.
4. Design and Build Web Shopping Carts Which Display Data from Databases, and Which Take user Input From HTML Forms and Store in Databases.
5. Learn Why MySQL Really is better than Oracle (in the Advanced section)

Eventually everyone will get the idea that of course PHP is nothing without MySQL, and the products are really just one single piece of software. Newbies the world over will shake their head in confusion when some of us mention that we use PHP with PostgreSQL, or Oracle, or without a DBMS at all!!!.

Re:Oh dear lord not again!

[dash2]

All kidding aside, can anybody say what they would like to see in an introductory book on PHP/MySQL etc., maybe that hasn't been done before?

Yeah... I'd like to see 400 blank pages and the last one says "JUST USE PERL".

It's right there on page 34

[Anonymous Coward]

wget http://www.ca.postgresql.org/ftpsite/pub/source/v7 .3.2/postgresql-7.3.2.tar.gz
tar xzf postgresql-7.3.2.tar.gz
cd postgresql-7.3.2 ./configure
gmake
su
gmake install
adduser postgres
mkdir /usr/local/pgsql/data
chown postgres /usr/local/pgsql/data
su - postgres /usr/local/pgsql/bin/initdb -D /usr/local/pgsql/data /usr/local/pgsql/bin/postmaster -D /usr/local/pgsql/data >logfile 2>&1 & /usr/local/pgsql/bin/createdb test /usr/local/pgsql/bin/psql test

-r

Re:I AM GOING TO FAIL MY LOGIC EXAM TODAY

[trix_e]

as evidenced by the fact that you are reading Slashdot instead of studying.