Object-Oriented PHP: Concepts, Techniques, and Code

Object-Oriented PHP is an excellent tutorial of OOP. There are many books that cover OOP in general, but this one focuses entirely on PHP's implementation. I particularly liked how Lavin focused on walkthroughs that are plausible examples of real world web development. I've programmed using and read about OOP before, and I've seen most of the pedestrian examples of objects--dogs, cats, cars, and people--but those are all things that can be tangibly observed. You can look at one or think of one and figure out how to create a class for it in OOP. However, programming never deals with anything like that. Your objects are going to be things that only exist in the realm of the computer, like a MySQL object, an object for constructing navigation, or resizing images. This practical approach makes OOP all that much more approachable: you will be able to observe the benefits of OOP immediately if you've programmed before.

'Object-Oriented PHP: Concepts, Techniques, and Code' is a typical No Starch book and that is a very good thing. At ***** RECOMMENDED

As other reviewers have stated, this is defiantly not a book that will teach you object oriented programming, nor, have I found a book that teaches all the concepts of OOP and how to program php in conjunction with one another. I would recommend that if you want to learn OOP, then read the book "Head First Java" -- you will know OOP inside and out. From there, if you have a little procedural PHP under your belt, the syntax of Java and PHP are nearly identical. If you already know OOP, but need to learn how to define classes etc, in PHP, this is an excellent resource and a good read.

Object-Oriented PHP by Peter Lavin is a good book for any traditional/procedural PHP programmer who would like to know what those object-oriented PHP programmers are so excited about. If you are considering adding object-oriented PHP to your toolbox and want a step-by-step, example based guide for the beginner, this is a good book to start with. This book is also for programmers who want to switch from PHP 4 to PHP 5. Lavin starts with an overview of object-oriented PHP and discusses several of its advantages. He then discusses the basics of object-oriented programming such as classes and inheritance and the specifics for this type of programming in PHP. Next, he teaches you how to write your first class. One of the nice things about this book is that the author starts with this simple example and, as you progress through the book, shows how to build upon, extend and reuse that simple class to do more advanced programming. The first step is to extend this class into a directory item class that will list all the files in a directory or list just certain files as needed. Next, you will write a thumbnail class that will create thumbnail images on-the-fly that are reduce in dimensions and quality thus reducing the download time. The third class you write is a page navigation class, similar to that used by Google, that will control the number of items listed on a page and also the number of page links in the navigation. Finally, he shows you how these three classes work together and with CSS. Next, Lavin discusses the MySQL database class and how it works with the MySQL database. He also covers inheritance and how that can be applied to simplify error handling. He then moves on to abstract classes, magic methods and how dynamic websites can benefit from the SimpleXML extension to work with RSS feeds and the SOAP extension for a website search engine. We all hate to document our programs and Lavin shows you how to use the reflection class to self-document your code. Peter Lavin has a web development firm and writes for several publications including PHP Hacks. There is a companion website that contains downloads of all the code and working examples.