This is a great book, it covers a ton of material in total but does not totally cover anyone particular subject. I will not list all the chapters another reviewer did that already, but I have over 30 books on php and this one was on my wishlist here on amazon for a long time.
This book does have examples and they are working examples if you manually type them and follow along. The examples however are not long and do not go in depth or build upon previous examples, each example is just long enough to demonstrate the subject. This to me is better than the online php manuals, because it makes more sense. The manual uses generic variables and naming conventions, such as foo and bar and foobar, $a, $b, $c etc, which for a new programmer is confusing. This book uses real names and puts the material into a perspective that most people can better envision. Like examples about employees.
This is more of a reference. It even says in the introduction"novices and seasoned php and MySQL developers alike have something to gain from this book, as I've intentionally organized it in a hybrid format of both tutorial and reference",
So this is not a here is a a script from beggining to end starting with the basics and building, the book would have to be two volumes, it is over 2 inches this as it is. If you are looking for a follow through step by step, info then implementation and build up, David Powers books are the ones you really want, I love those books. But you really really should consider having this book for an easy reference, this will give you a more in depth way to review information in other books, or a second explanation, this is sort of like having a tutor.
Over 2 years ago I decided with no prior experience I was going to learn how to build websites. I started with a wysiwyg editor, learned it, and found out I needed to learn a language to process forms on the server side. That lead to my discovery of php, the most confusing programming language known to man. I say that becuase it has procedural and now OOP abilities, for example java is straight and very simple to learn, pure OOP. I am working on sites where procedural and OOP php are intermingled and it gets confusing. This book has been a huge help in figuring it all out.
One thing I learned after reading many books on php and mysql and just not getting it, was I needed to learn the basic programming concepts. So I did my research and found out what my local college was using for that. The book programming logic and design, by Joyce farrel(5th edition), there are 2 and introductory and a Comprehensive, I suggest the comprehensive, that is the one I got for just a little more $$, these books are not cheap, about $80, but the information is superior. She does not teach you a programming language she demonstrates the logic and how to design programms, how to use flowcharts, and suedocode. There are entire 50 page chapters on how arrays work, methods, fucntions all the stuff the php beggining books try to show you, not to say they fail at it, but it helps to have a book on nothing but that, then learn a programming language, like php. There is also a book that goes with it to help demonstrate the concepts with code java or vb, programs to accompany programming logic and design. I bought it and do not really recommend it, you could learn alot from it, but I feel it was written with too little example code for a begginer to grasp with out deep thought and many trials and errors. Just read Joyce farrels book along with David powers books and your set, along with some other books.
By the way, while David powers does walk you through he does tell you he is going to have you do something then undo it and do it better. This may frustrate some people because it takes time, but you really can't rush learning php as I am now learning it takes lots of time and practice, repetitious practice, until it is burned into your brain, then beginning php and Mysql is a very very valuable book for quick simply explained information.
All in all I have learned PHP takes patience, java is fairly simple, and structured much like php's oop, yet php's OOP is a devil in its own with its keywords, and other very special features.
The section on smarty is short, but clear cut once you figure out how to configure / use it, it is not a full explanation. If you want that look up smarty on amazon, there is only one in depth book. I pray someone will write another book about smarty soon.
What I really liked about this book and its author Jason Gilmore, is the book has his email address in it and he does actually email people back????? That is a first for me atleas.. I had a question about something and he emailed me back in I want to say within 24hours, I have never once had a response from any author, he also has a site for the book www.beginningphpandmysql.php
I only take the time to write a review this long because these are the ones I look for when purchasing any product, and the one where the guy listed the chapters is what made me finally fork out the money for this book, there are still many more on my wishlist here and I am very happy with my decision to purchase this book sooner than others. Furthermore I have many many apress books, they seem to be pretty well written.
Other books I like: Not complete tho....
PHP and MySQL Web Development- Developers library 4th edition, Luke welling Laura Thomson, 969 pages, has really follow me step by step projects. Nice book to learn or reinforce info.
Beginning PHP and Mysql E-commerce- from novice to Professional 2nd edition by Cristian Darie and Emilian Balanescu,,, contains how to walk through step by step how to create a t-shirt shop project/product catalog/shopping cart,product recomendations, and so so so much more a very thorough walkthrough of start to finish e-commerce, although I do not think this is a beginner book for understanding php,
You must remember there will be code errors in every book after reading many I can say it is every book, but after a while you spot the error and can fix them, it is not possible to have a 100% accurate book it is too easy to leave out a ; " ' . >< ? / \ {}[] or whatever or mess up a variable name.
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