Professional PHP Programming

Ok, this is a very good book. I bought this book, with very limited programming experience. I had only really tinkered around with PHP.I found this book very easy to read, and use when I needed it later for a specific job. I think this book is better used going through it from start to finish, taking notes, or however else you learn. There are about 200 pages of Appendix with some handy references.I skipped the installation chapters as I had PHP already installed on my web host.At the end of many chapters, there are exercises you do that links to the chapter you just covered. For the first few chapters you work on a online job application, and build that up at the end of each chapter. Then it moves on to an address book...At the end of the chapters(before the appendix) is 4 case studies: Shopping cart, Phorum discussion board, Email application, and Database browser. Here they write these web applications, and show you how it's done!There are not many mistakes in the writing. I think there are two mistakes in the code, but that is covered on their website.Overall I think this is the best book on the market for PHP. It is interesting, very practical, and is a great book for learning PHP.What are you waiting for? :)

I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn PHP. This book is well written and most of the examples are practical.This book assumes you have some familarity with programming, although not much. The book is easy to read. The authors have done a good job of making the content interesting and fresh. This book is especially helpful if you are interested in doing e-commerce since one of the main case studies in this book shows you how to construct a shopping cart.There is a handy HTML tag reference in the back of the book. This book is not perfect, few are. Advanced users, as you can see from some of the other reviews, may find it lacking. For beginners and intermediate programmers like myself, it is terrific. It is the best book available on PHP and well worth the money.

I've read the other reviews of this book. The negative reviews seem to come from people who are *very* experienced with PHP. I, personally, would say that this book is excellent for just about anyone who uses PHP. My thoughts are that if you spend only a few dollars on a book like this and benefit even slightly by buying it, then it was worth it. I bought this book and have found it useful many times so far. This book is *not* just a reprint of the on-line manual, like other books are.At the moment this is definitely *the Best* PHP book out there.

This has been THE PHP book I've been waiting for. Well written, great analogies, loads of examples. If you want to learn PHP this is the book, esp. for those with a passing understanding of Perl, or shell scripting, or C, C++, etc. I can't praise this book enough.

This is a fantastic book. It talks the reader through installation and configuration in a very effective manner, this has been a stopping block to many of the open-source books that I've read. Although, I would like another page or two explaining how Apache does some of the things it does...but, I guess that is the job of an apache book, not of this already meaty 850 page book.The book is also has a good balance that fits very neatly between the "for dummies" and the "nutshell" books.