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Core Web Application Development with PHP & MySQL
jsuda writes "Core Web Application Development with PHP and MySQL is an intermediate
to advanced-level guide for programmers and developers. It bills itself as >everything
one needs to know about building robust database applications. That is a
bit of puffery but this is a comprehensive practical guide for designing and building
production-quality, database-enabled applications." Read the rest of John's review.
Core Web Application Development with PHP & MySQL
author
Marc Wandschneider
pages
912
publisher
Pearson Education
rating
8
reviewer
John Suda
ISBN
0131867164
summary
Fine strategic overview
The author is an open-source platform expert and software developer. He comes from a background of working with standard desktop Windows-based applications and made the transition to building dynamic web applications. His experience in making the transition informs this book as a comprehensive explanation of how to use the various technologies that go into writing web applications. For those making similar transitions, this is a very fine presentation done by a thoughtful, systematic designer. For those already busy in the PHP/MySQL area, the advanced level of instruction is likely to be valuable.
The emphasis is on open-source applications, particularly PHP5 and MySQL in an XHTML/Javascript environment. But, beyond technologies, the author's focus is on the strategies and systematic approach one needs to design and implement successful web applications. He writes for an advanced audience which is already basically familiar with programming and XHTML. Those writing or planning dynamic web applications will benefit most from the book.
There are 33 chapters in five parts - basics of PHP, database basics, planning web applications, implementation, and sample projects. There are three appendices covering installation and configuration of PHP, MySQL, and other related open-source applications like Apache, a set of charts of database function equivalents among the leading database types - MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, and a short list of recommended reading.
This is a large format book of 912 pages, including index. My reviewer's copy is a prepublication version containing grayscale graphics and much white space, especially around the code snippets, making reading easy and comfortable. Although the material is high-level and technical, the writing seems light and casual. Wandschneider's writing style flows easily, never bogs down even with technical details, and the book reads much faster than one might expect.
Although the best part of the book contains the three start-to-finish sample projects at the end - a calendar system, weblog engine, and e-commerce store, the lead-in chapters are nicely done, too. Chapters 1 and 2 are about getting started in PHP. There is a brief comparison to perl and C++, but the bulk is about PHP terminology and programming concepts. Much is made of PHP5's new object-oriented features, but the discussions of that here (and in Chapter 4) was about the only parts which I feel needed more clarity - the rest of the chapters are very clearly stated and contain plenty of good examples.
Chapters 3 - 7 continue with scripting concepts like functions, classes, arrays, strings and characters. The discussion is not designed to instruct comprehensively about PHP itself but works on a higher level of showing how PHP interacts with MySQL and other technologies on an overall basis. You can get detailed PHP coding instructions elsewhere. Chapter 6 contains an unusually good discussion of character sets, usable for global applications, and provides instructions on configuring Unicode and multi-byte support for high-level applications.
Part 2, Chapters 8 - 12, take the same approach to MySQL and databases in general. They include discussion of basic terminology and concepts, designing and creating databases, storing and retrieving data, PHP-to-database connectivity, and advanced topics, like use of "transactions" and advanced querying.
Part 3, Chapters 13 - 17, deal with the server-side matters. Again, the level of presentation is not on comprehensive details of PHP, MySQL, and web services, but present a comprehensive overview to guide planning, design, and implementation. Here the author states overall design considerations of a website noting how to incorporate CSS, HTML, code libraries, user interfaces, and web services into a working dynamic website.
User management and security concerns are noted throughout the book and Chapters 14 - 17 deal specifically with validation, and software and hardware security, including tips on how to secure your server. These passages on security are some of the better and clearest written I've experienced in this area.
Part IV continues the systematic approach to website construction discussing error handling, debugging, cookies, and sessions (again some of the clearest explanations I've read), authorization, and data validation with regular expressions. Chapter 21 is entirely about globalization and localization that is, dealing with the fact that the Internet is global and that there is a need to deal with foreign language sets. There are tips on how to determine users' locations and how to script to account for different language sets, including Unicode.
Chapters 23 and 27 are about XML and are especially useful now that XML and XHTML are becoming the reigning protocols of dynamic web activity. There is an extensive sample of using XML to work with the Google API. Using XML with PHP is an advanced topic and it is only generally covered here, together with XML web services and SOAP. Other chapters cover the use of extensions to PHP, like PEAR, developing a coding "style", creating test suites, configuring PHP.ini, and more. The three working examples are extensively commented and contain complete code examples.
The book comes with a comparison CD-ROM containing all of the sample code, and versions of PHP5, MySQL, and Apache HTTP server."
You can purchase Core Web Application Development with Php & MySQL from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
The author is an open-source platform expert and software developer. He comes from a background of working with standard desktop Windows-based applications and made the transition to building dynamic web applications. His experience in making the transition informs this book as a comprehensive explanation of how to use the various technologies that go into writing web applications. For those making similar transitions, this is a very fine presentation done by a thoughtful, systematic designer. For those already busy in the PHP/MySQL area, the advanced level of instruction is likely to be valuable.
The emphasis is on open-source applications, particularly PHP5 and MySQL in an XHTML/Javascript environment. But, beyond technologies, the author's focus is on the strategies and systematic approach one needs to design and implement successful web applications. He writes for an advanced audience which is already basically familiar with programming and XHTML. Those writing or planning dynamic web applications will benefit most from the book.
There are 33 chapters in five parts - basics of PHP, database basics, planning web applications, implementation, and sample projects. There are three appendices covering installation and configuration of PHP, MySQL, and other related open-source applications like Apache, a set of charts of database function equivalents among the leading database types - MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, and a short list of recommended reading.
This is a large format book of 912 pages, including index. My reviewer's copy is a prepublication version containing grayscale graphics and much white space, especially around the code snippets, making reading easy and comfortable. Although the material is high-level and technical, the writing seems light and casual. Wandschneider's writing style flows easily, never bogs down even with technical details, and the book reads much faster than one might expect.
Although the best part of the book contains the three start-to-finish sample projects at the end - a calendar system, weblog engine, and e-commerce store, the lead-in chapters are nicely done, too. Chapters 1 and 2 are about getting started in PHP. There is a brief comparison to perl and C++, but the bulk is about PHP terminology and programming concepts. Much is made of PHP5's new object-oriented features, but the discussions of that here (and in Chapter 4) was about the only parts which I feel needed more clarity - the rest of the chapters are very clearly stated and contain plenty of good examples.
Chapters 3 - 7 continue with scripting concepts like functions, classes, arrays, strings and characters. The discussion is not designed to instruct comprehensively about PHP itself but works on a higher level of showing how PHP interacts with MySQL and other technologies on an overall basis. You can get detailed PHP coding instructions elsewhere. Chapter 6 contains an unusually good discussion of character sets, usable for global applications, and provides instructions on configuring Unicode and multi-byte support for high-level applications.
Part 2, Chapters 8 - 12, take the same approach to MySQL and databases in general. They include discussion of basic terminology and concepts, designing and creating databases, storing and retrieving data, PHP-to-database connectivity, and advanced topics, like use of "transactions" and advanced querying.
Part 3, Chapters 13 - 17, deal with the server-side matters. Again, the level of presentation is not on comprehensive details of PHP, MySQL, and web services, but present a comprehensive overview to guide planning, design, and implementation. Here the author states overall design considerations of a website noting how to incorporate CSS, HTML, code libraries, user interfaces, and web services into a working dynamic website.
User management and security concerns are noted throughout the book and Chapters 14 - 17 deal specifically with validation, and software and hardware security, including tips on how to secure your server. These passages on security are some of the better and clearest written I've experienced in this area.
Part IV continues the systematic approach to website construction discussing error handling, debugging, cookies, and sessions (again some of the clearest explanations I've read), authorization, and data validation with regular expressions. Chapter 21 is entirely about globalization and localization that is, dealing with the fact that the Internet is global and that there is a need to deal with foreign language sets. There are tips on how to determine users' locations and how to script to account for different language sets, including Unicode.
Chapters 23 and 27 are about XML and are especially useful now that XML and XHTML are becoming the reigning protocols of dynamic web activity. There is an extensive sample of using XML to work with the Google API. Using XML with PHP is an advanced topic and it is only generally covered here, together with XML web services and SOAP. Other chapters cover the use of extensions to PHP, like PEAR, developing a coding "style", creating test suites, configuring PHP.ini, and more. The three working examples are extensively commented and contain complete code examples.
The book comes with a comparison CD-ROM containing all of the sample code, and versions of PHP5, MySQL, and Apache HTTP server."
You can purchase Core Web Application Development with Php & MySQL from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
An honest question for anybody to answer. Do most people still learn by picking up a 900+ page book rather than learning from example? I find most technical books extremely difficult to finish so I very rarely attempt to read them.
bluespaceradio.com - New Wave, Indie and Alternative
I can't understand how a book which (according to the review) doesn't have a chapter dedicated to the concept of "multi-tier programming", can have the presumption to say it's '>everything you need'. Heck, it doesn't even MENTION templates.
As some of you know, multi-tier applications have (at least) 3 tiers: Database, business-logic, and interface. Java guys know this better: Model-View-Controller.
I have implemented for my webapps an MVC framework, and maintaining them or modifying them is a piece of cake. It's so easy i get bored with it sometimes.
In comparison, recently I've had to adapt the OSCommerce 2.2MS2 (built in PHP) for one of our clients' store. Every single php file in it has database, business-logic and interface ALL MIXED. The only separation they have is wrappers around SQL functions (that's not true separation, but a mockery). Maintaining it is a LIVING NIGHTMARE.
So please do yourselves a favor: Study the MVC approach and implement an MVC framework in PHP. You can use any templating library you can find. (for database, i use an adapted version of phplib's sql library). This alone has saved me not hours, but weeks of work, and is worth ">everything" you could learn from that book.
Try phpeclipse which works within the Eclipse IDE. for info check here http://www.phpeclipse.de/tiki-view_articles.php/
Then again, I could be wrong.
Christmas is by far e-bay's lowest traffic of the year.. There's a bunch of charts showing the huge drop off, year after year, on the number of auctions starting about a week before christmas..
If someone has the link, post it? I'll see if I can dig it up.
> MySQL is fine for the vast majority of applications out there.
Ya, I've heard that line of bs from mysql for about a half-dozen years:
- they said it when they didn't have transactions - and it wasn't true
- they said it when they didn't have unions or subselects - and it wasn't true
- they said it when they didn't have referential integrity - and it wasn't true
- they said it when they didn't have triggers, stored procs, and views - and it wasn't true
Now, they've resolved *most* of the problems, and it's *almost* true. Sure, you can build robust applications with it. Of course, you can build robust applications with msql as well - it's just the extra effort that is required to achive "robustness" when:
- silent errors and data corruption problems current and historical
- frequent deviations from ansi sql (comments, nulls, etc)
- simple optimizer that is notorious for performance problems on 5+ way joins
- if you're planning on having your app run at various isps, most don't support current version - leaving you stuck historical issues (no views, etc)
- lack of parallelism or partitioning features - giving it about 2-5% of the speed of oracle/db2/informix when it comes to large table scans (reporting, analytics, etc)
So, sure. You can build robust apps with it. But man, it is so much more work than using postgresql. Let alone db2 or oracle. Maybe this makes sense for somebody (asp model targeting large number of isps) where you can afford the economics of re-inventing the wheel since most isps are running back-level versions.
Now, this might change in two years. Assuming that MySQL comes up with a substitute for Innodb (no attractive options yet), simplifies their licensing, and resolves the most significant existing issues. Then yes, it will be a reasonable option, right up there with postgesql, etc. Until then save your licensing dollars for something better and freer.
I guess someone is rehashing this review. If you stroll down the Amazon page for this book, you get the same review text found in this Slashdot article but dated 10/30/2005. So much for submitting an original review. Then again this is Slashdot.