Object-Oriented Programming with PHP5: Learn to leverage PHP5's OOP features to write manageable applications with ease [Paperback]

Hasin Hayder (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 30, 2007

This book will help you to understand the core object-oriented programming concepts with PHP. PHP is one of the most popular languages for web application development, and PHP5 supports OOP very well. This book will help you to master core OOP features in PHP as well as advanced Topics like Design Patterns including Model-View-Controller (MVC), and Unit Testing. It includes suggestions to help you to write good code. Moreover this book provides comprehensive documentation and working examples on the Standard PHP Library (SPL), which are hard to find elsewhere. It will really help you to leverage PHP's OOP features to write manageable applications with ease.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Hasin Hayder graduated in Civil Engineering from the Rajshahi University of Engineering and Technology (RUET) in Bangladesh. He is a Zend-certified Engineer and expert in developing localized applications. He is currently working as a Technical Director in Trippert Labs and managing the local branch in Bangladesh. Beside his full time job, Hasin writes his blog at http://hasin.wordpress.com, writes article in different websites and maintains his open source framework Orchid at http://orchid.phpxperts.net. Hasin lives in Bangladesh with his wife Ayesha and his son, Afif.

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Packt Publishing (December 30, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1847192564
• ISBN-13: 978-1847192561
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,396,356 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Unclear, fails to communicate OO principles, December 22, 2007

By 

James Stewart (Grand Rapids, MI, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Object-Oriented Programming with PHP5: Learn to leverage PHP5's OOP features to write manageable applications with ease (Paperback)

With PHP 5.3 looking very close to release, bringing with it significant changes such as namespaces, this is an awkward time to release a PHP book of any generality. Within a few months it will be clearer how well the new features are taking hold and there is almost certainly going to be a clamour for books that show how new features affect development practices and how to make use of them. Even without that, it is hard to recommend this book as it fails to live up to its promise and provides a poor introduction to Object-Oriented programming.

The book's first problem is the poor quality of the English contained. The author does not appear to be a native English speaker and the publisher has apparently done little to clean up the language. For the most part that simply makes for some curious rhythm and phrasing but there are a number of places where it contributes to inaccuracies, such as constant confusion between objects and classes. Finding such inaccuracies alongside mistakes such as confusing polymorphism and inheritance I'm left wondering how well the authors really know their subject. Packt would do well to employ another reviewer to clean up the syntax and definitions before any reprints.

The structure of the book is curious. Rather than approaching topics through the use of an example project or projects, the author gives disconnected samples, often offering little beyond that which can be found in the online PHP documentation and generally failing to explain how techniques would be useful. While he insists that PHP5's Reflection API is an important tool, there is little to back up that assertion. There's a large code sample and a list of the methods and attributes of a reflection object, but no real substance. The database section covers some key examples, such as PDO, ADODB and MDB2, and touches on the ActiveRecord pattern, but uses four pages to list the RDBMSs that ADODB supports and then only spends a page and a half on ActiveRecord, failing to explain either its concepts or advantages in any detail.

The high point of the book is the half chapter on unit testing. A few well chosen examples provide a demonstration of how code can be tested and how that allows for refactoring without fear of regressions. The reasons for unit testing are clear as is basic usage of PHPUnit. I'd have liked to see further examples rather than several pages listing all the default assertions PHPUnit provides, and I disagree with the claim that there should never be more than one assertion per test (individual tests should focus on a single concern, but can use multiple assertions to do so) but by that point in the book it was good just to see a section that made its point clearly.

Fundamentally, I came away from this book feeling it had failed to communicate clearly the core principles or reasons for object oriented programming. By trying to cram in too much reference material, not offering clear contexts for each technique, and not lingering on ideas like encapsulation the book fails to instill OO techniques.

Disclaimer: I was sent a free copy of this book to review

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Same as the documentation...but as interpreted by a non english speaker and with less examples, April 21, 2008

By 

Truth "amazon14397" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Object-Oriented Programming with PHP5: Learn to leverage PHP5's OOP features to write manageable applications with ease (Paperback)

Read the php online docs instead, their examples are much better explained. What do you expect from a book with a clipart flower on the cover? Cheaply produced, outsourced, and spammzor'ed to everyone registered in the stupid php classes website.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Don't Buy, August 3, 2008

By 

Hank Castello "Hank Castello" (Tulsa, OK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Object-Oriented Programming with PHP5: Learn to leverage PHP5's OOP features to write manageable applications with ease (Paperback)

The author is obviously not comfortable with the English language, and not from a teaching background. The book has frequent errors, is not easy reading and just plain is not a book that is easy to learn from - maybe not even possible to learn from. I've taught myself over a dozen programming languages from books and I am a competent PHP programmer who just wants to add OOP style, yet this book was useless to me.