Customer Reviews

PHP 5 in Practice

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

 

 

I had taken a beginner's course in PHP web development and wanted to learn some more in depth techniques. I had read a positive review of this book on another website and went ahead and bought it. When I got the book, I read the table of contents and found a whole chapter on email. All other books I have read only spent a paragraph or two on email. The chapter in this book went into formatting, verifying and sending email. That chapter alone made it worth the money.

The rest of the book is very easy to read and very informative. Each chapter opens up with an overview of the topics and a reference to the functions used in the chapter. This book makes a great desktop reference as well as a learning tool. So whatever your experience level, I recomend this book.

This is a really good book on PHP to veteran software engineers ever since I read initial sample pages from my Kindle last night.

I haven't purchased the book yet but I am pretty much sure that the authors' talking on the subject touches levels of computer science - how to do things better. To those who are new to PHP, like me myself the language is relatively "primitive" in perspective of pre-defined modularity compared with the other programming languages performing same tasks, for example HTTP Post and Get in pre-defined event handling routines in C# with ASP.NET. It is "primitive" becasue PHP does not have those pre-defined event handling routines but leaves space for the programmers to control Post and Get, or MVC patterns or any other objects by their own creativities.

The book talks about PHP from "basics" that is necessary for me to use the language more efficient. For example how the routines produced through the PHP compilation or interperation to achieve same goals by using different syntax, constructor, or function differently. For instance, double or single quotes around a string value and echo, print, include or required of constructores, etc.

I will definitely purchase the book and try to update my review later on. For the time being, I give 5-stars.

This is a very worthwhile book to own. It is very well laid out with every aspect of developing in PHP covered in one or another. I especially liked the in depth (but practical) treatment of areas where as a developer you need to have a grasp of how the language can perform. For example, graphing, how to traverse binary trees, sorting, managing databases etc. These are some of the basic requirements needed both by the language and the developer.

In this sense, the book is first class and delivers what the title says, PHP in Practice. I was initially wondering why there were not simple screen shots demonstrating some of the tools and techniques, but am now grateful that screen shots were not included as it would have meant less space for the actual examples of "PHP in Practice". In fact I got to enjoy reading the code and visualising the result and sometimes experimenting and applying the code.

A book worth every bit of its price.

I started my web site in the 90's and used Perl for everything. Over the years, Perl has just intertwined my site so thoroughly that I HAVE to use it. But I do recognize that PHP is the more popular choice, so I'm always interested in books like this.

I like the "Quick Hits" sections - these are at the beginning of chapters and just give quick examples of relevant functions. The first chapter started with string handling, certainly a common task in web programming and it was helpful to see that quick overview.

I also liked that the author deals with real world examples. The title is "in practice", and he lives up to that. He examines real web site problems and desires, and provides PHP solutions.

I enjoyed this. If I can get off my duff and move forward with PHP, I'm sure this will be helpful.