Programming PHP

Most of the books I've looked at on PHP have tied it in a three-legged race with mySQL. I was looking for something that taught the core language itself and its place in applications besides those in which it is teamed with mySQL. This appears to be that book. The core PHP language is very good at handling strings and arrays and objects. Along with standard and optional extension modules, a PHP application can work with databases like Oracle and MySQL, draw graphs, create PDF files, and parse XML files. You can write your own PHP extension modules in C to provide a PHP interface to the functions in an existing code library. You can also run PHP on Windows and use it to control other Windows applications such as Word and Excel with COM or interact with databases using ODBC. This book is a guide to all of these capabiliies of the PHP language, as well as a tutorial on the core language itself. This book assumes you have a working knowledge of HTML and that you know how to program - preferably in either C, C++, or Perl. The first six chapters teach the core language itself. The six chapters include a dedicated introduction and a chapter on language basics which acts as a concise guide to PHP program elements such as identifiers, data types, operators, and flow-control statements. The next four chapters after that concern functions, strings, arrays, and objects respectively. The following is an outline of the remaining chapters of the book: Chapter 7, "Web Techniques" - PHP was designed as a web-scripting language and, although it is possible to use it in purely command-line and GUI scripts, the Web accounts for the vast majority of PHP uses. A dynamic web site may have forms, sessions, and sometimes redirection, and this chapter explains how to implement those things in PHP. You'll learn how PHP provides access to form parameters and uploaded files, how to send cookies and redirect the browser, and how to use PHP sessions. Chapter 8, "Databases" - PHP has support for over 20 databases, including the most popular commercial and open source varieties. This chapter covers how to access databases from PHP. The focus is on the PEAR DB system, which lets you use the same functions to access any database, rather than on the myriad database-specific extensions. In this chapter, you'll learn how to fetch data from the database, how to store data in the database, and how to handle errors. The chapter finishes with a sample application that shows how to put various database techniques into action. Chapter 9, Graphics - Many web images are dynamically created, such as graphs of stock performance. PHP supports the creation of such graphics with the GD and Imlib2 extensions. This chapter demonstrates how to generate images dynamically with PHP, using the GD extension. Chapter 10, PDF - PHP has several libraries for generating PDF documents. This chapter shows how to use the popular fpdf library. The FPDF library is a set of PHP code you include in your scri

The creator of PHP himself, Rasmus Lerdorf, put together a thorough and enlightening guide to PHP. In this book you will find everything you need to know about PHP from variables to a long list of all the PHP functions and how to use them. I found many features of PHP that I had no idea existed (such as creating PDF files). I use this book as a reference for a PHP course I teach, and its examples have been more than helpful to me in designing lesson plans.The one caveat of this book is that it is not geared toward brand new web programmers. PHP as a language derives from C, C++ and Perl, and if you are not at least somewhat familiar with these langauges, you can get lost in this book. The authors really want to draw a parallel between PHP and its predecessor languages so that programmers can pick up PHP more easily. I really like the fact they try to do that, and it has helped me enjoy this book more. But on the flip side, it will be more difficult for new programmers to read this book. I really hope O'Reilly comes up with a "Learning PHP" book that will be more for beginning programmers, because PHP is a great language to learn, and it would be nice to have books to appeal to all levels.In any case, for a book about PHP, you can ask for no better book than one written by the author itself. This book does keep up the tradition of professional, useful O'Reilly programming books, and is worth the time for web programmers to read. Thus I think it earns 5 stars.

This book is an excellent introduction to the PHP scripting language, which is one of the most popular ways to add dynamic content to the web; PHP seems to be displacing Perl on Unix and ASP on Microsoft platforms for this purpose. PHP is suitable for low to medium traffic sites, and is said to be faster than either Perl or ASP. Because it's an interpreted language, it's not as fast as JSP or natively compiled cgis, but few sites need the level of speed or the complexity that comes with those technologies."Programming PHP" does an excellent job of teaching the language to those with a little bit of software background, for example in Perl or C. The first few chapters quickly demonstrate what can be done with the language and document the language basics, which, while C-like, have a few differences that are important to be aware of. The book is clear enough that it may be useful to a savvy person with no computer language background.The rest of the chapters cover specific issues in more detail. There are chapters both on more involved language features, like PHP's treatment of strings, arrays, and objects, and on applications of the language, such as using databases with PHP and how best to handle web site security issues in a PHP based site. These chapters are independent of each other, so the reader can focus on various issues as they come up - though a few, like the security chapter and the application techniques chapter, are worth reading earlier if you have time, as they will help you set up your web site scripts so as to prevent headaches later on.The text has many examples, which are well designed to succinctly document language features. These examples seem to be largely accurate and bug free. It may help that one of the authors, Rasmus Lerdorf, is the original creator of PHP.

This book is well written and an extremely easy read. The coverage is very very comprehensive yet concise! If you were worried about dragging through another 1400 page wrox book just to grasp another language, you will want to run and get this book. You will pick up PHP fast with no delay. It is around 380 pages along with a nice reference area of php functions. If you are a web developer who wants to pick up PHP quickly simply purchase this book. Folks with only html experience can also expect to have an excellent understanding of PHP by the end of the book, although I suggest that the book be read by someone with some form of previous web programming experience. This is only because certain coverage is very efficient and may be hard to keep up with if you are a complete novice in web programming basics.Did I forgot to mention that the co-author is the creator of PHP!! :)