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PHP and MySQL Web Development, 2nd Edition

Posted by timothy on from the back-for-more dept.

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.

11 of 172 comments (clear)

  1. Why not Online Documentation ? by ThomasFlip · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You dont need a book to learn PHP and MySQL. There are plenty of tutorials out there for interfacing php and mysql in addition to all of the documentation the websites will provide. For any coders who already know a thing or two about coding, the book is a waste of money.

    --
    If the dollar is an "I owe you nothing", then the Euro is a "Who owes you nothing." - Doug Casey
    1. Re:Why not Online Documentation ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      There is more to life than man pages and other various unorganized online documentation. Some prefer to find their answer quickly.

    2. Re:Why not Online Documentation ? by ciroknight · · Score: 5, Insightful

      not to make myself out as a loser or anything, but most online tutorials explain the how, but not the why of the problem. When I first learned about interfacing the two languages, I made hundreds of code mistakes, and I could never find out why my code didn't work. No web tutorial tackled the task of debugging bad code, none explained what SQL was to me, it just said "do this, then do that". So, before you diss the book, look into the why of having a book, then critizise.

      --
      "Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
    3. Re:Why not Online Documentation ? by cvd6262 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Have you ever tried to pull up online documentation in an airport in a third world country? Or how about on an airplane? Nothing sucks worse than being on an 11-hour flight and realizing that you don't know something that's going to halt your coding binge worse than having to change your laptop battery.

      Or how about on a boardwalk in Southern California, trying to code something quick enough that the Mrs. doesn't get mad at you for interrupting the vacation?

      I've been in these situations, and that's why I carry the first edition of this book. Well, I used to, when I was first getting into PHP/MySQL.

      I'm not saying that online tutorials is not enough. I'm teaching a class in these technologies next semester, and I am requiring the students to use online references. There are just times that you do not have access to the web and must have some info.

      --

      I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.

    4. Re:Why not Online Documentation ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      I prefer using books because at any one time I could be working on different projects that require me to program in more 5 different programming languages and sometimes I have a hard time remembering the different syntax of functions. It is alot faster for me to find what I am looking for in a book rather then firing up a webbrowser and searching google. Also, not every programming language and program are documented on the net as well as PHP and MySQL are.

    5. Re:Why not Online Documentation ? by the_duke_of_hazzard · · Score: 4, Insightful
      I disagree strongly. Online documentation tends to be inconsistent, poorly thought out and unclear.

      Books tend to be clearer, better-researched and more authoritative. If you already know the technology well, you can sort out the online wheat from the chaff and get what you want rapidly. If not, you flail around a myriad of web pages looking for information that fits your needs.

      This applies to my experience of PHP as well as other related experiences.

      Of course there are exceptions to this, but my bookshelf grows and grows. Also, if online docs are so great, how come O'Reilly books still sell so well? They're hardly cheap...

  2. Again... no best practices by esconsult1 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    I dont want to throw a wet blanket over all of this, but again, here's a LAMP book that perpetuates terrible PHP coding practices.

    As a member of the PHP (and Perl) faithful, when are we gonna learn that books like these give the community and open source in general a bad name?

    Maybe I'm out of line in criticizing this book, maybe I'm looking for a different book, but when we have a book that covers web development best practices along with learning about PHP, Mysql and so on, then I will be the first in line to recommend and purchase it.

    --

    Newsfollow.com

  3. First Edition was quite good. by Seek_1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I picked up the first edition, not because I really needed to learn PHP (I was already comfortable with it), but so that I'd have something I could use as a reference. I have to say that I was EXTREMELY IMPRESSED with the first edition. It is actually my favorite programming book (out of maybe 30 that I've bought for school and fun). I like how the book progresses quickly through each chapter. And not quickly as in skipping over the details (like some other books out there), but in that they only present the info that you need, and encourage you to look up things in the online documentation for more detail. I also really liked the projects that they went through at the end of the book. It's nice to see practical applications for all of the things that the book went through. ... and for everyone who says it's only PHP and you can just use the online docs, well, I don't know about you, but I'm not exactly going to break out my laptop to do some reading on a city bus! ;)

  4. this is a great book by everyplace · · Score: 3, Insightful

    While I have been using php.net's examples and documentation, along with the available mysql information, when I bought the first edition of this book it opened up a whole new level of work for me. I mean, yeah, you can teach yourself php and mysql without any real trouble if you have a good head. But if you have never actually used a web programming language or proper database, then where do you learn the proper ways of doing something? There's only so much examples of code can teach you; they don't necessarily teach you concepts. That's what this book did for me.

  5. Re:Perl vs PHP question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I know I might sound like a troll,but hey,why would we drive a 2003 car when the 1990 one has 13 more years of experience!
    Dan

  6. Re:PHP is a mess - try out ZOPE by tha_mink · · Score: 1, Insightful

    If there are errors in your script PHP will just continue to run the script. If you are lucky you see a warning. If there is an error in a INSERT or UPDATE MySQL query it will just insert a similiar value. E.g. if you try to insert "45JF" in an integer column MySQL will insert "45" and won't give an Error.

    You're a dumb ass. You can set the error handling in PHP quite easily and if you're stupid enough to not check your input before you do an insert then you deserve what you get.

    --
    You'll have that sometimes...