Customer Reviews

Building Database Applications on the Web Using PHP3

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

Got the book yesterday and loved it. Though they rave about the almost 600 pages in this book, there is actually only 152 pages of actual "tutorials." This is broken into 8 major categories. Though 152 pages seems little, it is so well written that by the time you finish the tutorials, you are on your way. The rest is a function reference, but a very well written one, not just a rehash of some man pages. Each function entry has an explanation of what the function does, the function and syntax, and then several examples written out (not just pieces of code, but entire examples) for you to put into you webpage.

In a nutshell, this is finally THE book to start with for non-programmers and programmers, housewives, babies, small dogs..anyone that wants to learn PHP quickly.

I recommend getting the "MySQL New Riders" book and " Building Database Applications on the Web Using PHP3" (this one) for anyone wanting to learn (and quickly I might add) how to use this language. I have bought just about every PHP book out there and this is the first one to actually spoon-feed the information in a way that you will learn PHP in a night (well, I stayed up most of it.)

This book, which opened up with a lot of promise, ended up disappointing me. The title is misleading in that there is very little about what actually has to be done to build a database application. If you are looking to find a book that will take you through the basics of working with server side databases and show you how to construct web pages that will interact with those databases, look elsewhere.

More than anything this book is a compendium of the PHP3 command set. The author's website did not work as promised and there was no response to email feedack. In the sparse and rudimentary application section what sample code existed had typos. In the reference section, some examples still had boilerplate filler.

In summary, as a reference text this book is more than adequate; as a guide or teaching aid it completely misses the mark.

I should have paid attention to the other reviewers who gave this book such low marks, but I didn't and decided to by the book anyway. Bottom line, it was a waste of money.

I really can find no redeeming qualities to this book at all.

First of all, the book is too Linux focussed. Although I do happen to use Linux, those who are trying to learn PHP on Windows NT will find that some of the examples are invalid on NT.

Second, if you don't already have a pretty good grasp on programming, you are going to get lost pretty quickly (despite the authors claims that you don't need to be a programmer). This book shows coding examples and uses terms that the average person is not going to be familiar with. Terms and concepts are introduced, and either not explained at all, or given a quick once over that is not nearly suficiant. Because of this, this book will not teach you PHP.

This book will not teach you SQL either, and the sample applications in the tutorial will not work unless you already know how to add users and grant permissions in PostGreSQL or whatever other database you use (and you can forget about logging into their website like they suggest. Apparently they had a hard drive crash and still have not gotten that part back up).

Even if you do know how to set up your SQL db properly, almost none of the sample applications in the tutorial will work anyway because almost all of them contain coding errors and syntax errors serious enough to prevent the application from running at all. Some of the applications contain multiple errors. Didn't the authors even bother to try running these applications to check for errors before including them in the manuscript? I had to find and fix the errors in almost every single tutorial application before they would work properly. There aren't even any corrections to the code on the website for the book! And by now the authors have to know that most of their samples contain errors. Are they just to lazy to put corrected examples on their web site?

The Troubleshooting paragraph at the end of each application is useless. They say "We have tried to isolate a few of the common errors we've seen..", and then don't give any explination of these common errors. It is simply a cut and paste from one application to another - The exact same paragraph at the end of each application. When things don't work, this paragraph is useless because it claims you typed in the code wrong or don't have the database set up correctly.. The reality is that things don't work because the authors typed in the code wrong, and the code samples you have are useless as they will not even run.

It also seems the authors don't even understand HTML much less PHP. For example, they include illegal HTML comments in some samples, enclose samples in PHP tags when they should not be in PHP tags (in fact the PHP tags cause the sample to break), use checkboxes when radio buttons should be used instead, insert useless tables that serve no purpose (cause they only have one row and one column and use line breaks and paragraph breaks to seperate lines, making the table serve no purpose at all.

If on the other hand you already know all of the above topics pretty well (SQL, PHP, and HTML), this book is not going to teach you anything new, and would still be a waste of money. So this book is useless to the novice and also useless to the experienced user.

Stay away from this book. Spend your money on something useful instead.

If I am not in Hong Kong, I would return the book. I agree with other reviewers that if you want to learn how to develop real database application using PHP, go somewhere else. The application examples in the book are so piecemeal. I am also disappointed that 2/3 of the book (pp.153-559) is language and function reference. I did not know this when I brough the book from Amazon! You can learn PHP and database programming much better by reading Professional PHP Programming (Jesus Castagnetto et al.) eventhough the book is not specifically written for database development. Their application examples are more realistic and full scale.

I was quite disappointed in this book. While the sample "applications" appear to be quite useful and easily adaptable even for the novice (such as myself), there is only about 150 pages of original material (the rest is not much different from stuff freely available on the Internet). Likewise, the CD-ROM does not even include the source code for the sample applications. Just more stuff that's readily available on the Net.

There is a "private" web site -- Addison-Wesley advertises this as an incentive on the back of the book. However, the web site, at least recently, has included nothing more than additional freely and easily obtainable information. The code and "examples" are "coming."

To top it off, email sent to the webmaster (the only contact link on the site) gets rejected by their mail server.

Addison-Wesley should be ashamed of this.

If you're a beginner, get PHP Essentials by Julie C. Meloni instead. No, I don't know her; it's just a great book, and her web site does have the code and further examples.

I am not usually this critical about books, but this one unfortunately deserves a negative mention. It was really disappointing.

After reading through this book, I feel that the title totally misrepresents the contents of this book.

A better title would have been "A printed reference manual which barely touches on the subject of database programming"

Pages .. - 49 : a generic introduction

Pages 50 - 76 : The PHP3 Language

Pages 77 - 98 : Databases and SQL

Pages 99 - 153 : generic PHP applications with a few database-related examples

Pages 153 - 597 : PHP language reference and index

As you can see, very few pages actually refer to the subject at hand.

The book tends to refer a lot to other sites, instead of actually giving information.

The language reference is disappointing as well, since it does not contain enough detail for the beginning PHP programmer.

The seasoned PHP programmer would be better off using the online PHP annotated reference manual at www.php.net.

Sorry, but I really cannot recommend this book.

I'll keep this short - this book is a mess. The authors claim that the book is for the novice and the "almost-expert" alike, but novices will be completely befuddled by it, and experienced programmers will be confused and frustrated. The reader will find dozens of editorial mistakes. It almost became a game for me - "find the errors in the code". My aggrevation with the book increased with every chapter. I am sorry I bought this book before reading the reviews on this site. I will never make that mistake again.

The book had a good start, starting off with a quick beginner-style intro into databases, but focused mostly on PostgreSQL. It was all downhill from there. There were COUNTLESS typos and syntax problems in the example applications. This book does NOT tell you how to create a good web application. If you already know how to do that in ASP, it tells you how to do it in PHP. If you're not experienced with ASP or any other server-side DB language (cold fusion), and you're looking to get into DB apps on the web w/PHP3 - do NOT buy this book - it will be a waste of your money.

Cruel and unusual that this should be my first book devoted to PHP. If you believe that finding the errors in a book's example code to get them to run is a sure way to engrain the program syntax into your brain forever, then you'll love their "teaching style" in this beauty. I guess I've never understood serious syntax problems in this age of cut and paste but I've never been more suspicious that authors were just typing off the top of their heads than I have been with Building Database Applications on the Web Using PHP3. And I didn't use their CDROM to install PHP, PostgreSQL or Apache, but I don't see how their second example program can work unless Apache is given file creation and overwrite privileges--security anyone?

Frankly, I'd feel cheated if I picked it up at a Half Price Books chain. I'm sure I'm among the _not_ surprised that these guy's PHP expert web site is dead. Run now, run fast, run hard and be _very_ afraid of this heartless waste of innocent wood pulp by Craig Hilton and Jeff Willis.

I was very disappointed with this purchase, wish I could return it. The book is disorganized, and the code is full of errors.