Customer Reviews

Learning PHP and MySQL

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

There are two problems with this book. First of all it's filled with typos, both in the text and in the sample codes. The typos in the text made me laugh (its vs. it's type stuff), those in the codes made me cry. There are entire lines in some codes or screen ouputs that clearly do not belong there (take a look at page 126, about a third of the way into the page there's a line that goes --> ,"Aaron Weber"); <-- . Clearly, this line serves no purpose on its own and it was accidentally cut and paste from the end of the following line. Just too many typos, within 10 pages I had lost my confidence in this book. Secondly (and more importantly), this is NOT a beginner's book. It attempts to educate the reader on PHP and MySQL, and fails at both. For instance, the book never once mentions something as basic as the difference between echo and print in PHP. Then there's the instructions on installing phpMyAdmin on page 140, specifically item 6. I know nothing about MySQL so I have no idea how to "set the hostname, etc. of my database in the config.inc.php file". Thanks for nothing. In summary, if you're a beginner, you may think you've learned PHP and MySQL upon reading this book, and in fact you'll just be confused, and if you already know them, then why on earth would you use this simplistic book? I've returned my copy for a refund. By the way, I saw that one of the positive reviews below was posted on the book's blog site. Let's see if mine makes it.

This book will take you from a basic understanding of creating static HTML to an elementary but quite nifty practical knowledge of serving up dynamic Web pages on your own.

Chapters 1-6 take you through basic orientation, the installation of Apache, PHP and MySQL, followed by an intro to PHP statements.

Chapters 7-9 introduce database concepts and step you through getting PHP to talk to MySQL.

Chapters 10-17 begin the process of creating forms and other components of Web sites and applications following all the way through to integrating some sample applications.

Each step and procedure has ample code printouts, logic diagrams and output screenshots. Review of knowledge was done well. One feature of this book you should take advantage of is the question section at the end of each chapter. I usually find these irritating and skip them because often the questions don't reinforce learning and no answers are provided. The questions in this book *are* well constructed and the answers *are* provided.

Quibbles: Be prepared for a bit of keyboarding. O'Reilly provides a site for the book but the example code is not available for download. Your first bout of keying code may end in failure because the authors forget that in the first examples (the most important ones for an absolute beginner!) they need to recall being a beginner. They ask you to write out and save "a simple HTML document." I did that. The example did not work on the server. I checked this, I checked that, I re-typed the code, I typed other examples. No luck. Then I stumbled onto changing the extension of my .html file to .php and all was well. See my point?

I knew I had picked up the wrong book when, in the first or second chapter, the authors said that variable types didn't matter and that they wouldn't bother covering them until late in the book. Admittedly, I can see their point, but the way the statement was written made it apparent that they were aiming this at HTML authors and other people with little to no real programming experience. If you want to pick up the PHP language and already have experience with a real programming language or two, you'd be better off picking up something else. If not, this book actually would be a good way to get started.

Update: Now that I've chewed through a little more of the book, I would no longer recommend this book to even a beginner. Uncommented, and hard to read examples that make poor use of whitespace dominate later chapters. The examples aren't the 3-4 page long beasts you find in some C or Java books, but nonetheless, this book does not demonstrate good coding practices, and should not be used by a new programmer to pick up the ropes.

This book forms a decent introduction to the topic, but it's annoying when you have to figure out what the authors MEANT to say when code examples don't work as advertised. The worst case I've seen is on page 183, where the code is so far off from what they meant it to be, if you run it, it produces a blank page. There's no output. I managed to figure out what they MEANT to say, and to make it work, but I shouldn't have to do that. There are plenty of other spots where I've been scratching my head trying to figure out what they meant, where things were not sufficiently explained, or where things didn't work as described. It's frustrating and time-consuming for a beginner to the topic like me.

I am a newbie to MySQL/PHP. Truly. Many reviews of the O'Reilly series clearly have extensive backgrounds in programming. I do not: I had a little HTML under my belt, that's it.

The book does do an excellent job explaining what Apache, MySQL, and PHP are and how they interact. The author does a good job explaining PHP syntax and MYSQL as well. But, if you pick this book up as a beginner with a specific project in mind, you may have trouble figuring out how what your are learning relates to what you want to do. That's the joy of being a newbie. Using this book along with something like the Nutshell books, which are reference books, will speed things along.

The installation section in this book--for the true beginner--was a huge let down. This section assumes knowledge that many people who are diving headlong into this may not know. If your Apache installation goes wrong (and mine did), the author simply tells you to redo the section. I quintuple checked my configuration instructions: everything was as instructed. And you get PHP and MySQL to work if Apache isn't working.

Ultimately, I tried both of the all-in-one installations of AMP: XAMPP and wampserver, which preserved my ability to proceed forward.

I have enjoyed this book and it is very well written with enough to get you going. However there are a lot of typos in the book. Most of them are easily ignorable such as a space omitted in an unimportant area or a simple hit of the wrong key. Generally you can ignore it and there is no problem with understanding the material.

Although Table 8-5 is pretty much useless (I haven't checked others). Just by making a simple string I found 4 mistakes and had to resort to web resources to get the right date strings.

Overall I wouldn't base my decision on that alone as it is a good book. I'm not unfamiliar with programing so learning the php was just learning the syntax. I however had never touched mySQL in my life before this and the book made it quite painfully clear.

I came to this book as a newbie, with some knowledge of HTML and CSS, and that's about it. This book nearly killed my desire to learn PHP/MySQL.

The problems start early, in Chapter 2. The installation information is seriously flawed. Many of the links they point you to are dead. And even when I went to the book's web site for an updated link, and followed the instructions to the letter, I still wasn't in business. I googled to try to get help and stumbled across some other lost soul using this book, with exactly the same problem as me. Guess what? He was begging for help on a message board somewhere. I should have realized right then that this book was worthless. But I soldiered on.

I managed to get PHP and MySQL downloaded (though the connector was still not working), and started working on some of the PHP coding. I learned some PHP, sure, but it was a slow, slow process. Practical applications? Practice exercises? Clear explanations for inexperienced computer programmers - presumably the kind of people who would be buying a book like this? Rare or nonexistent.

I skipped ahead to the MySQL section, made it in a few pages, and then they recommended that I install PhpMyAdmin. Well, I did, and then I ran into the problem with the lack of connection between PHP and MySQL again. So I went back to Chapter 2, and wasted another hour of my life trying to figure out how to get the past the basic installation issues.

So, yeah, I paid $30 so I could figure it all out for myself. And I still haven't. So thanks a lot, folks. You took $30 of my hard-earned money, and in return gave me several hours of aggravation.

I know the computer experts out there will laugh at this review - they always think they're superior to newbs. But I know I'm not stupid. A better book will teach me the basics of PHP and MySQL, I just need to find it. This one is not newb-friendly. And if a how-to book isn't newb-friendly, then as far as I'm concerned it ain't worth a thing.

NEWBS BEWARE. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.

I returned the book for a refund. The book contains too many errors! The installation instructions in Chapter 2, contain so many errors that I lost all confidence in the remaining sections. If you purchase this book, good luck getting past the installation...

I'd give it 0 stars if I could!

Learning PHP & MySQL is a detailed guide to building a database-driven web site. The authors do an excellent job of starting from the beginning, assuming no prior knowledge of either PHP or MySQL. In fact the only assumptions that the authors seem to make is that you have a very basic understanding of HTML. After working through the book and the detailed examples anyone should be able to write basic programs the meet common needs as well as create and interface with a MySQL database. Some of the programming areas covered in the book include decision making, working with arrays, using functions, database design fundamentals (missing in most books), getting PHP to talk to MySQL, modifying objects and data, and security. At the end of the book the reader ends up with a complete example application.

The authors section on creating a MySQL database and working with it is excellent and truly reads easy to those not familiar with MySQL at all. This is the best introductory text for implementing PHP and MySQL that I have read. If you are already familiar with both PHP and MySQL then you will probably prefer another text but if you are new to them this is a text you should seriously consider as one of the best teaching tools and first forays into the field. Learning PHP & MySQL is very highly recommended to anyone wanting to learn the basics of using this very powerful combination to create a database-driven dynamic website.

I found this book to be seriously flawed in the following ways:
1.) The installation instructions contain many errors from bad URLs, to steps out of order, to downright errors and confusion surrounding which version of PHP is actually being installed and how. You would be much better off Googling for a tutorial on the subject.
2.) Certain topics are mentioned, but then totally glossed over. I am left wondering if a lot of information wasn't cut from the book without removing the "teasers" that promise coverage of a topic.
Simply put, I just do not believe a technical editor ever read through this book, and it is definitely not up to O'Reilly's typically high standards.
I hope this helps.