18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Good Introduction to AJAX for the PHP Programmer, November 8, 2006
This review is from: Beginning Ajax with PHP: From Novice to Professional (Paperback)
PHP is a very popular web scripting language. AJAX is the hottest new interactive web technology. It only makes sense to write a book to combine the two.
This book does a great job of combining clear explanation of the concepts with real working code that you can reuse in your own applications. Giving me a head start with reusable code is something I always look for in a book, and this book provides a wide range of PHP and Javascript code that you can reuse.
Chapter 1 begins with a very good description of what exactly AJAX is, and how it differs from traditional web programming. Chapter 2 builds on Chapter 1 by explaining the basic components of AJAX. The XMLHttpRequest object is covered in great detail. Each property and method is explained. The book only explains how to use XMLHttpRequest to communicate to the server and does not cover hidden iframe's. However, that may be for the best, since I believe hidden iframes are mostly a legacy way to implement AJAX communication.
Chapter 3 gets right into it with connecting PHP with AJAX. Chapter 4 follows up with using the database. If you are not familiar with PHP or Javascript you may find some of the examples a little difficult to follow. Though if you've worked with C/C++/C# or actual Java, the syntax is close enough you should be able to follow what is going on. Though a good PHP and Javascript book will come in handy!
Chapters 5 and 6 cover forms and images, which are important parts of any AJAX web site. The author presents a calendar application that pops up forms to allow you to enter data. The book does a good job of explaining the difference between how traditional POSTed forms work compared to AJAX.
Chapter 7 shows how to create a real-world AJAX application. You are taken step by step through the creation of an AJAX photo album application. Chapter 8 discusses look and feel. It makes the very important point of when to use AJAX. Its a pain to program many of the AJAX "effects" by your self, so the author introduces you to the PEAR (PHP Extension and Application Repository) package. This can speed PHP and AJAX development quite a bit.
Chapter 9 discusses web services. Chapter 10 is very interesting as it discussed "spatially enabled web applications". This is the type of application that Google Maps is! Chapter 11 is important as it discusses cross-browser issues, and how to avoid them. Chapter 12 covers some of the unique security issues that AJAX presents. Chapter 13 explains how to test and debug AJAX applications.
The book ends with Chapter 14, which is an overview of the DOM. The DOM, or Document Object Model, allows you to easily parse and generate XML. This is very important for the XML messages that you will be exchanging with the server. If you are getting confused by some of the DOM usage earlier in the book, I would suggest reading this chapter after about Chapter 3 or 4.
This is a very good introduction to PHP and AJAX. The book is only 252 pages so it does not waste much time with introductory information. You really should be at least basically familiar with the following technologies before starting this book:
Basic HTML/XHTML layout
Java Script
PHP
SQL
Cascading Style Sheets (not critical, but still useful)
The book does not attempt to teach these technologies, but rather builds upon them.
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19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Decent introduction to Ajax, but flawed execution, February 22, 2007
This review is from: Beginning Ajax with PHP: From Novice to Professional (Paperback)
This book is pretty polished and gives a lot of information, but I found it flawed in a few rather bothersome ways....
First off, the author glosses over a lot of things that are generally considered "best practices" when it comes to using HTML -- for example, web page examples are often cluttered with "style" attributes applied to multiple tags, when this sort of thing should really be dealt with using a stylesheet (reducing the amount of typing and *greatly* increasing the readability of the examples!) If there is a particular reason why he doesn't do this, he should tell us, and he doesn't.
Second is the frequent use of innerHTML, which is nonstandard JavaScript -- I would be far more confident that he's truly teaching me the best way to use Ajax if he were more clearly demonstrating knowledge of best practices for HTML and CSS.
The other thing that made this book cumbersome in places was that in giving an example script, he'll dump four or more pages of solid code in your lap, and then say "Okay, here's what I did...", which leaves you flipping back and forth trying to follow what he's saying about code that's several pages back. I've had a much easier time with other books that explain as they go: give a chunk of code, and if there's something that warrants explanation, do it right away and *then* proceed with more code.
It's a decent book in terms of information, but a harder slog than it could (or should) have been.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Error filled piece of @#$@#, June 17, 2007
This review is from: Beginning Ajax with PHP: From Novice to Professional (Paperback)
Were the editors asleep when they put this out? A couple other people commented on the errors, but still gave it a 3 star rating. They were being kind. You can't learn anything when the examples are so completely riddled with errors. Others commented on the use of the deprecated innerHTML. For $35 I expect better from an author and his publisher. This one is being returned.
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