Customer Reviews

PHP Functions Essential Reference

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Whether you are new to PHP or a seasoned web developer, this reference book is an absolutely must. Clean, concise, and well written, the authors are well-known and respected in the PHP community. Zak Greant heads up the PHP quality assurance squad, Torben Wilson is one of the longest-running credited authors of the PHP manual, and Graeme Merrall contributes to several areas of PHP development.

This book is fast. You can get to what you need quickly, and if you're not sure what you need, the logical hierarchy and table of contents makes narrowing things down very snappy. Within minutes of picking up the book, I've learned new things about PHP, even after 4 years of hardcore PHP development. Not too many books do that. The only downside I can find with it is it won't fit in my shirt pocket.

This book has many other strengths.
- It has a companion website that compliments the book and is maintained by the authors.

- It has been released under a license that reflects the very nature of PHP and Open Source Software, a real credit to the authors.

- One of the Technical Reviewers of the book during the process of it being written was none other than Ken Coar, one of the leaders of the Apache Foundation (author of the best darn web server ever made) and one of the Open Source movement's greatest assets. Buying a PHP book reviewed by Ken Coar is like buying a Bible blessed by the Pope.

If you can't RTFM, then for sure, RTFB.
That is: Read This Friendly Book. ;)

I do a lot of PHP web development. The books that use the most are "MySQL by Paul DuBois", and this one.

I hear a lot of comments stating, "you can find it online". Yes, its true, you can. But, when you are writing code the last thing you want is another window open or spend valuable time trying to find an answer.

The authors have done a great job laying this book out. The information is catagorized and aphabetized. There are short examples that do a good job of explaining how each function works. And what really sets it apart from others, is it tells you if the function has been deprecated and/or what version of PHP and OS supports it, it has a "see also" for each pertinent function, and a great layout(check out the sample pages).

If you program using PHP, get this book. The time it saves is well worth the price. This book is for all levels of PHP programmers, novice to experts. Don't be fooled into thinking all you need is the downloadable manual from php.net. The manual is useful, but it doesn't work as well as this book.

This book is always within arms reach when I'm programming and I'm sure it will be the same for you.

I found this book surprisingly useful as an ordinary PHP user. I thought it might be only for gurus, but when I picked up the book it fell open to a function that could have saved me hours of programming on a previous project. I built it from scratch when I didn't know the function already existed.
That's the value in this book. There are hundreds of PHP functions, the vast majority of which are unknown to the casual user. If you're on deadline there isn't time to learn them all, or even to wander the PHP sites until you hit paydirt.
This book simply lays them out, with a clear description and example attached to each. It's a huge time-saver.
My one suggestion is that the book would benefit from having a usage index. Right now, functions are grouped by type (say, time & date functions), then listed alphabetically. But often users don't know what a function is called. They only know what they want it to do.
It would save even more time if there was an extra index where you might look things up by use, say, "Create random password." That would make this time-saver even faster.

4 stars because of the horrible (non-existent) support of the promised online version.

I have scoured the Web and have found these two sites that still have the online version ("http://fooassociates.com/phpfer/" says the server is down!). It was a LOT of work to find these, and I'm working on downloading the whole thing to put in a ZIP file and host, some time in the future, but in the mean time I thought I'd save everyone a LOT of work! Here you go:

http://web.archive.org/web/20040227150743/http://fooassociates.com/phpfer/
http://www.phpdig.net/ref/

This book is undeniably the best PHP Reference book I own. It's saved my butt in many situations while programming. Using an index in a regular book to reference a command is anoying and time consumable. Using this book to reference a command is so fast and easy. The index is setup so nicely. Think about it your not always looking for a way to use a particular command sometimes your looking for the command in general and sometimes you don't even know what the command would be under. For instance I had to figure out a way to make pages so they were refreshed at every visit. I didn't even know where to begin. So I went to the index and looked up Caching, boom right there, "preventing, page 238" less then 1 minute later my page is running smooth. I tried that previously in my other reference book (this book is awfull and will remain secret for their sake) impossible. Don't take a risk buy this book wether our an experienced programmer or new to php. Its awsome, I even like the size, easy to tote around and set next to your keyboard unlike these massive 2000 page bibles of unneeded text and garble.

While no function reference can top the ease of use and simplicity of php.net/$function_name, some manage to hold their own. This isn't just another regurgitation of the downloadable help system, this book actually manages to give you usable examples along with function explanations you can wrap your head around.

This is not a book for those just beginning PHP, and I pity anyone who write an application using only this book. You better have some preliminary knowledge of PHP before picking up this book, but beyond that it's probably one of the best reference books available, and small too!

This is the perfect book for someone who wants a comprehensive reference of the functions available to PHP programmers. An brief description and example usage is provided for each function.

I must have 10 books on PHP and MySQL, this is the one I use the most.

This is without a doubt, a brilliant PHP reference book.

The PHP functions are grouped in chapters based on their relevance. E.G. String functions are in one chapter, Session functions are in another etc. So even if you don't know the name of the function you're looking for, you'll most likely find what you need in the relevant section.

The book is very well laid out, there are nice descriptions (not too long and not too short) of the function and its use. There is example code showing how to use the function and the functions have a 'related functions' part as well which in my case encourages further reading and thus expanding your knowledge of all things PHP.

Unfortunately though I've found that not all functions are covered in this book. I agree you can't cover them all, but surely a string length function would be covered? Don't let that discourage you though because I've only found a couple of functions that I've needed that weren't covered in this book. Apart from that, I wholeheartly recommend getting a copy. One of the best reference books I've ever purchased.

I own a number of so-called 'essential' references for many languages, and over a dozen PHP books that claim to be the end all of PHP documentation.

If you have already learned PHP but are human and cannot remember every function's name or syntax, this book is for you.

It is organized in clear and concise format, you can find your needle in a haystack either by looking in the grouped chapters, or if you know the name of the function, just not the details (which in reality happens more often than not <G>) the well stocked index will get you going.

This ...I prefer having the hardcopy in my hands when coding so that I can quickly jog my memory without having to navigate through the web for the info.

This book, along with the PHP Developer's Cookbook by SANS should be on *every* PHP Developer's desk... not the bookshelf!

This book has an excellent easy to use layout and contains just about every PHP function you can imagine. Each function includes a description of the values the function requires and returns along with some sample code showing its usage. It's not for beginners trying to grasp the initial concepts of PHP, for that I'd suggest the PHP Visual Quickstart Guide by Larry Ullman. For anyone else, this is an indispensable reference! It's worth every penny!