PHP 5 Advanced: Visual Quickpro Guide

This book is simply amazing. The author is very clear and breaks down the code to explain why he did things the way he did. Even as a seasoned PHP programmer, I still learned quite a few things from this book. The code is structured very neatly. If you are interested in learning about Object Oriented Programming in PHP, this book is a great place to start. I learned a lot about PHP security and OOP and now have a solid foundation that I can expand on. (And those are only a portion of the topics covered in this book!) Even the chapters on Ajax are spectacular. The author explains everything so well, I was able to modify the Ajax code to do what I wanted with no previous JavaScript experience. Larry Ullman is an amazing teacher! If you are considering any of his books, they will be well worth your time! I couldn't express this enough. I normally don't write reviews - but I could not resist writing one for this book. It is so good!

The book is very good and is the question to many answers in PHP developers head after crossing the beginners line , it saves alot of googling for tutorials solving this advanced topic , as you notice it's advanced material and by no way for beginners , if you are beginner just read his book PHP and mysql for dynamic websites , this book covers advancd topics like multidimentional arrays , recursion , Security , e-commerse , PHP OOP in three interesting chapters , chapter 6 : basic OOP , chapter 7 : advanced OOP, chapter 8 : real-world OOP , the cover networking stuff like working with Sockets , Geolocation , cURL , Then Chapter 10 illustrate compressing files , PHP-GTK environement , establishing time interval driven commands with CRON and using COM with PHP , Chapter 11 discuss in detail PHP command line interface , chapter 12 for PEAR , chapter 13 for AJAX architecture , implementation and debugging , chapter 14 for PHP and XML integration like parsing XML and programming RSS feed , Larry Ullman always surprise us with his writing quality and the ease we digest his illustration . recommended :)

I've purchased this book and PHP 6 and MySQL 5 for Dynamic Web Sites: Visual QuickPro Guide, both by Larry Ullman. They're wonderful -- with them, I took my first steps into working with databases and a language like PHP. The step by step examples have made it very easy to learn and when I've been stuck -- I've gone to Larry's site and he's answered my questions in his forum. Two of the best purchases I've ever made. Highly recommended.

While not quite as good as its predecessor (PHP and MySQL for Dynamic Websites 2nd edition) in terms of readability and ease of understanding, Larry Ullman is still, with this book, miles in front of pretty much any other technical author I have read. The chapters on object oriented programming are certainly the best I have come across on the subject. There is also a quick but useful demo of how to put a bit of AJAX in to a PHP site to increase usability. The one thing missing from this book that I personally would like to have seen, would be an introduction to frameworks. But let me stress this point: Larry Ullman is the best technical author, by a long, long way, on any subject I have ever read about in my life. I just wish he was an expert and wrote books on all the other things I want to learn about - that's how good his teaching ability is.

I've been reading Larry's books since back in the early days when php/mysql books were barely found. I have to credit Larry's books with helping me just get started learning about php & mysql, and even helping me with most of what I learn today. I've purchased every new version of his books and pick up new things every time. It's so easy to step along with the examples, to help provide a solid understanding, and to give a fresh reassurance of what I may have already known... plus I always learn new tricks and techniques. I guess that's why I keep getting his books. This book especially helped me with a few tricks just at the right time, right when I needed help with them. I have over twenty-five php books and his are all in the top of my favorites and most referenced to.