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PHP and MySQL Web Development, 2nd Edition
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.
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
The previous version was good.
I am sure we will be getting at least one copy of this for our office as some of the junior programmers use the books and we let them take them home.
me personally, I really only use php.net if I need to look up a function, but then I have been doing this for a long time and don't need to read about the how's and why's, just need the facts and what functions expect.
From my experience, seasoned php programmers usually have a browser open to php.net to look up functions and seldom have any PHP books.
again, however, for beginners this book series is good.
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
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.
sic transit gloria mundi
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! ;)
While I haven't read this book or the previous edition. If you are wanting to learn the language and don't want to pay for the book, php.net and phpbuilder.com are two of the best sites available. They post have good references and PHPbuilder has a very useful forum in case you get stuck.
Someone needs to write books that address the need to deal with multiple language, bidi and related issues. PHP and MySQL can handle more than most people think, but one thing holding the non-Latin-1 development back is a rather chronic case of Latin1-centricity.